Springfield Weekly Republican

The Law's Delay in criminal trials work a thousand hardships that we seldom think of till some accident brings them to our notice. One of the worst and least justifiable is the imprisonment of witnesses, to which we made allusion a few days ago.

The report of the New York prison association, then referred to, contains these striking comments on this piece of injustice: It is by no means of rare occurrence—cases of the kind have often come to the knowledge of this association—that persons are confined in our common jails for weeks, and even months, for no other cause than that they happened to witness some criminal act, and being without friends or money, were not able to furnish bonds to appear at the trial. These persons are, for the most part, shut up with those who are either awaiting trial on a charge of crime, or undergoing sentence after conviction; and they receive no compensation for their loss of time, which not unfrequently entails severe suffering on their families, dependent as they are upon the earnings of their head.

The victims of the law in such cases are, of course, the stranger, the poor, the friendless,—persons who have little opportunity to make their grievances known, and of whose hardships the public seldom hear. It often happens, that, in this way, the witnesses of a crime are really the only persons punished for it, since they are imprisoned for a knowledge which they could not help, while the criminal is liberated on bail, and, in the end, is quite likely to escape either by paying a slight fine or with entire immunity.

Such things are not consistent with that respect for personal rights which is the theory and general spirit of our institutions. A reform here is imperatively needed. There should be some provision for taking the testimony of those who cannot give bonds to appear. Where this is impracticable, and imprisonment becomes really necessary—a case, we believe, of rare occurrence—adequate compensation should always be made for the loss of time incurred by the incarceration. The United States government makes compensation in all such cases, and so do some of the states; it is an act of simple justice. In any event comfortable quarters and reasonably good living should be provided for them, apart from the criminal wards.

The state itself often suffers injury in its administration of criminal justice through its practice of imprisoning witnesses. Persons knowing that they will be detained in jail to appear as witnesses, secrete themselves to avoid arrest; and so it not unfrequently happens that criminals fail to be convicted for want of the necessary evidence.