The People's Vindicator

Mrs. Smith and Covert Bennett who have been found guilty of murder on the suspicions of a Jersey judge and twelve Jersey jurymen, were sentenced to be executed on July 25. Judge Lynch's court, sitting in a wild Western town, would hesitate to drive a cart from beneath a prisoner's feet on such flimsy evidence as that which, under the high coloring and fertile imagination of Judge Knapp, induced the Jersey jurymen to declare the lives of these two persons forfeited to the law. There was absolutely no direct proof whatever against them, except the fact of their illicit love and the absence of any blood-stains from the woman's garments, which the astute Court chose to consider the most convincing evidence of her guilt. The flimsiness of the case for the prosecution and the warmth of the Judge's plea for conviction have led to the belief that a new trial was inevitable, and so it would be in any other State of the Union; but in New Jersey there is an obstacle in the way.

In the year of our Lord 1879 justice in New Jersey is for sale. This is a startling assertion, but it is strictly true. It costs a thousand dollars in that remarkably sharp community to make an effort to get a new trial, even when a prisoner's life is in peril. A poor devil who is found guilty of a crime in New Jersey may have the best possible case for a reversal of judgment or a new trial, but he must have a thousand dollars as well, or he may hang or go to jail for aught New Jersey justice cares. Mrs. Smith and Covert Bennett may have been guilty of the murder of which they have been convicted; but every lawyer knows that the character of the Judge's charge and the inconsistency of the verdict with the evidence entitle them to a new trial. They must be proved to be guilty, and not only suspected of guilt, before the sentence of the law can justly be put into execution against them. But they have not got as much money as justice is sold for in New Jersey, and so they are sentenced to death. Between two and three hundred dollars has been raised, but New Jersey justice demands a thousand. Pay or, she says to the unfortunate prisoners, hang and be cut down. It might be supposed that a pauper would be afforded a chance for his life in the land of malaria, mosquitoes and other nuisances, but it seems that only a convicted prisoner who can count out one thousand dollars has the slightest chance of escaping the gallows, provided he happens once to be found guilty on the suspicions of a court and jury.