The Deadly Farce of Frontier Justice

The acquittal of D. H. Long, tried at Whatcom for the murder of his wife and son-in-law, is an extraordinary verdict. Long's testimony furnishes no ground for a verdict of 'not guilty.' He does not pretend that he killed his wife and her paramour in self-defense; he certainly was not a lunatic, for his flight and hiding from justice shows that he was conscious of having committed an offense against the law. He was clearly by his own confession guilty at least of manslaughter, and he deserved some exemplary punishment. If the jury believed he was a lunatic, then he should have been defined as a homicidal lunatic and confined in an asylum. The jury evidently did not believe he was a lunatic, for an irresponsible lunatic never shows any sign of guilt, or takes to flight or goes into hiding. If the jury revivified for the benefit of Long the obsolete theory of 'momentary insanity' they did so in defiance of the law. In our judgment, the essential barbarism of American civilization is in nothing more shockingly exhibited than in the public arbitration of personal grievances with the pistol, and the disposition of juries to acquit the murderer on sentimental grounds. In France a gentleman fights like a brave man, while in America the place of the duel is taken by a street fight which proceeds generally to the death of one of the parties from an instinct of angry ruffianism rather than of wounded honor.