[Courts and Criminals by Arthur Train]@TWC D-Link bookCourts and Criminals CHAPTER III 10/13
The jury, naturally, are overwhelmed with the gravity of the occasion and the responsibility resting upon them. In the Patterson, Thaw, and Molineux cases the evidence, unfortunately, dealt with unpleasant subjects and at times was revolting, but there was a quiet propriety in the way in which the witnesses were examined that rendered it as inoffensive as it could possibly be.
Outside the court-room the vulgar crowd may have spat and sworn; and inside no doubt there were degenerate men and women who eagerly strained their ears to catch every item of depravity.
But the throngs that filled the courtroom were quiet and well ordered, and the justified interested outnumbered the morbid. The writer deprecates the impulse which leads judges, from a feeling that justice should be publicly administered, to throw wide the doors of every courtroom, irrespective of the subject-matter of the trial.
We need have no fear of Star Chamber proceedings in America, and no harm would be done by excluding from the courtroom all persons who have no business there. It is, of course, not unnatural that in the course of a trial occupying weeks or months the tension should occasionally be relieved by a gleam of humor.
After one has been busy trying a case for a couple of weeks one goes to court and sets to work in much the same frame of mind in which one would attack any other business.
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