The Boy Who Tried to Derail a Train
A Snohomish County jury acquits two young boys who tampered with railroad switches to watch a crash, sparking a furious editorial on the failings of the justice system.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The Snohomish Weekly Tribune reports that a jury in the case of the Francis and Harrier boys returned a verdict of acquittal after being out only an hour. The boys, aged 10 and 12, had deliberately placed a switch wrong for the purpose of witnessing a railroad wreck. The wreck occurred, and by a miracle, did not result in a terrible loss of life. Passengers were bruised and property was damaged. The older boy, Francis, remarked after the act: 'Yes; I did it, and I will wreck the damn train again, too.' Despite this evidence and the prosecution's effort to place the boys in a reformatory, the jury let them go free. Such verdicts illustrate an utter misconception by the average juror of their duty to protect life and property, often influenced by provincial prejudices against railroad corporations.
“The average juror, it is said, is sure to find a verdict against a railroad corporation, if he happens to dislike the company; that is, in practice he holds that nobody has any right to life, liberty or property in the courts except the friends of the juror.”
This 1892 editorial captures the deep-seated populist resentment against large railroad corporations that defined Washington politics for decades. The frustration with 'juror nullification' in the face of corporate power remains a recurring theme in American legal debates, where the social utility of a defendant often weighs as heavily as the letter of the law.
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