“Go after the representative citizens who are law violators. If you do your duty, you will break up some of this law breaking,” Judge W. F. Harding of Charlotte told the grand jury in his charge to that body here Monday morning at the opening of two weeks of Macon County Superior Court.
“Probably your leading citizens ae drinking,” he said, pointing out that 32 of the cases on the criminal docket were violations of prohibition law. “If you didn’t have folks above the average to drink it, you wouldn’t have folks below the average to make it and sell it.”
Judge Harding deplored what he said were two of the most dangerous tendencies in American life today. One, he said, is the “notion that we have done no wrong if we don’t get caught.” The other is the tendency to disregard the oath administered witnesses in the courts of the land.
Judge Harding especially urged the grand jury to bring in bills of indictment in cases where there is evidence of perjury; violating the compulsory school law; and in cases of selling cigarettes to boys under 17 years of age.
Macon county came in for unstinted praise from the jurist for the fact that not one of the first 18 men drawn for the grand jury duty offered an objection. Grand jury duty, he said, may be “the finest service a man can render his state, a real God-fearing American service. I feel like congratulating the county that it has such a citizenship that not one of the first 18 men drawn for jury duty offered an excuse. It is unusual.”
It is a custom today, Judge Harding said, for men to be divided into two classes: those below the average in intelligence, education and moral sense; and those above the average.
“We have had a notion that the man below the average is the lawbreaker. It is a mistaken idea. He is the man who is doing what you and I set the example for.”
People have a desire to see the laws enforced that do not interfere with their personal convenience or desires, Judge Harding declared, and he gave numerous examples. He mentioned the failure to observe the railroad crossing stop law. It is not the criminal who breaks this law, he declared, but the outstanding citizen. That citizen wonders why someone steals is chickens or his pig. He becomes indignant over it.
“He doesn’t have to steal, but he sets the example for the man who does.”
A banker, a deacon in his church and a leader in his community, Judge Harding said, recently deplored the failure of the courts to enforce the prohibition law, and wondered when it would be enforced. Judge Harding said he answered him that, when bankers ceased breaking the law against usury, probably it would be possible to dissuade the bootleggers from breaking the prohibition law.
“The same law that says thou shalt not sell liquor prohibits the lending of money at moe than six percent,” declared Judge Harding.
“It is the subtle influence of the respectable man,” who violates the law that is responsible for law breaking of the man unable to distinguish between the major and minor crimes. The idea that one may violate the laws that interfere with is personal convenience was characterized as the “most damnable propaganda.”
“The man who obeys the laws, whether there is a policeman there or not, is the only 100 percent American.
“The world is growing better. Boys and girls of today are better than boys and girls of another generation. The younger generation is interpreting life differently from the way we did—that is all. We must so direct our courts and schools and churches to interpret life in terms of the day in which we live. I am for the boy and girl of today, so long as they obey the laws.”
Much of the law violation of youthful offenders was attributed by the judge to the “romance of youth”—the desire to do something nobody else has done. “We must direct these impulses, and that will have to be done at the Sunday school, the primary department of the day school, and in the home.”
The grand jury was advised not to waste time in minor cases of gambling—instances of a negro shooting craps or a boy playing power. “There is too much high class gambling by your otherwise respectable citizens. I don’t mean to be personal to Franklin, but that is true of the State.”
Like every visitor to Franklin and this count who formerly has come her via Dillsboro, Judge Harding commented upon the road from Dillsboro to Franklin and declared that 10 years ago, when he first came over it, he declared he would never travel it again—and he had not until Monday, when he found it “like a pavement on the best city streets.”
In the course of his charge, Judge Harding repeated what he said he had stated in every court he had held for years—that he had yet to see a boy or girl offender who had attended Sunday school regularly, and whose father attended with him.
Of the cases on the docket when court opened, 32 were for violation of the prohibition law; 10 assault with deadly weapon; 8 carrying concealed weapons; 3 abandonment; 3 larceny; 2 driving a car without licenses; and one each of other offenses.
The 18 grand jurors chosen were: R. M. Houston, George Williamson, J. M. Rhodes, J. R. Norris, J. M. Brown, A. R. Sanders, E. M. Harrison, T. G. Corbin, Oscar Carpenter, E. F. Horn, Burt Oliver, J. Q. Hedden, G. C. Smith, W. M. Cleveland, R. L. Hale, I. V. Ramsey, A. L. Leach, and Ray N. Moses. Mr. Moses was appointed foreman by Superior Court Clerk Frank L. Murray.
From the front page of The Franklin Press, Friday, Aug. 27, 1926
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn92074069/1926-08-27/ed-1/seq-1/
No comments:
Post a Comment