Are Our Laws Responsible for the Increase of Violent Crime? [excerpt]

The next moral reform should be in the action of counsel. I never have believed that counsel in defense of a man charged with crime can go to all limits, and I think I can justify myself by illustration. President McKinley’s assassin Czolgosz, having no counsel, was consigned to two prominent Buffalo lawyers. These gentlemen saw that Czolgosz received a fair trial under our laws. For this they were applauded. Then they were applauded for not taking an appeal. But why should they not have taken an appeal? The answer is that the public would have felt outraged about it. But, still I answer in the language of gentlemen who have often answered in this way to me “It was their duty to their client never to desist as long as any legal weapon remained.” Czolgosz was like any other man tried for his life. Why didn’t they run from court to court with writs of habeas corpus, from one court to another with writs of various kinds? The answer is, public opinion would have bitterly condemned them. They desisted with everybody’s approval. This illustration serves to show that the action of counsel in respect to the defense of crime must be limited in some respects by general obligation to society.