Conviction of Rudolph Disse Shows Commonwealth Justice, Sept. 5, 1925

Virginia Justice

Wilmington Star

The ancient rivalry between North Carolina and Virginia has in more recent years assumed a different aspect. The land of the longleaf pine is no longer the valley of humiliation between two bumps of conceit. But while North Carolina has outstripped her northern neighbor in many respects, there still lingers in the Old Dominion one of the greatest attributes transplanted in the fair colony by the early English settlers, namely a respect for the law. In Virginia today, as in yesteryears, a murder is a murder, and the punishment for murder is death. In the fearless and impartial administration of justice, unhampered by maudlin sentiment and unfettered by social restraint, Virginia still points the way to North Carolina a score of sister commonwealths from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

In evidence of this there is the conviction of Rudolph Disse, the Richmond youth who killed his paramour and his rival and added a policeman to his list of victims when his escape seemed doubtful. Notwithstanding the pleas that he was insane, that he was a drug addict, and a victim of other weaknesses, Disse has been sentenced to pay with his own life for one of the three he took to assuage his bestial passions. It is noteworthy that Disse was not tried by a jury of Richmond people. The courts of Virginia gave him every opportunity to obtain the maximum benefits. A jury from another county was impaneled to hear the evidence, and this jury has declared him guilty.

Thus does Virginia justice wreak vengeance upon those who wantonly slay her sons. Disse was not notably prominent socially, or in a business way, but he was afforded an able array of counsel to represent him. Even had he been the scion of the oldest of the F.F.V.’s the result would have been the same. The records of Virginia courts show that money, affluence and social prestige are not sufficient to hoodwink the law.

Offhand we do not know what the homicides in 1924 is a serious indict show. In the two larger cities of the state, they will probably reveal a fairly high average, but taking the state as a whole, we believe Virginia’s record far less sanguinary than our own. Two hundred and ninety-nine homicides in 1924 is a serious indictment of North Carolina. It hints at a laxity somewhere that cries to high Heaven for remedial measures. Barely a day passes that some new homicidal situation is not spread across the front pages of the daily papers.

From page 4 of The Concord Daily Tribune, Saturday, Sept. 5, 1925

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