The Double Standard of Yakima Justice
When three prominent young men were fined for a drunken brawl, the local paper noted a stark disparity in how the court treated them versus a solitary woman arrested for the same charge.
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.
These very blooded young men of the town got on a high old 'bat' on Monday night last and as a result were arrested on the charge of being drunk and disorderly. Judge Henton assessed each $8.15 for fines and costs, while a poor unfortunate woman of the town who was arrested on a similar charge was made to pay $11.15. The cases of the young men are the more aggravated of the two, for by birth, education and association they should have held themselves under control and not over-stepped the bounds, while the conditions of the young woman are exactly the reverse; her life being a failure, she is shunned by respectable people and feeling her disgrace she recklessly seeks oblivion from her misery in the flowing bowl. These unfortunates are to be pitied and while they should be compelled to observe the law, the justice in making flesh of one and fowl of the other is not showing that charitable spirit which the good book teaches, nor is he exactly ignoring the fact that the woman fails to possess the elective franchise while the young men are not only themselves voters, but they possess considerable political influence among their associates.
“The justice in making flesh of one and fowl of the other is not showing that charitable spirit which the good book teaches.”
This 1891 editorial exposes how civic power—or lack thereof—directly influenced judicial outcomes, specifically referencing the disenfranchisement of women. Today, the conversation around the uneven application of justice and the influence of political capital in local courts remains a central, unresolved struggle.
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