hubert howe bancroft - Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History ...

INEFFICIENCY OF LAWS AND JUDGES. 193
the expense of keeping prisons and convicts, the difficulty
of enforcing the attendance of witnesses, and
the impossibility of securing good jurymen, especially
in the principal towns where there was a large proportion
of idle, reckless, disappointed, and desperate
men, ready to be summoned, and more than willing
to be bribed.
It has been many times remarked that crime was
much increased in frequency after the adoption of a
state government, as if the laws were chargeable with
the crimes; but the truth was that the laws were
not chargeable with the punishment; and the discovery
of this fact emboldened a constantly increasing
criminal element, which took upon itself to still further
defeat the ends of justice by corrupting elections,
and placing its own creatures in public offices. In
the first grand jury report, in San Francisco, were
eight indictments, two of which were for murder; all
of them were quashed on some technicality of the
law. Crime, they said, stalked abroad in open day,
and they were instructed by the court that they could
not take cognizance of it.
In his message to the legislature, in January 1851,
Governor Burnett urged the necessity of amending
the criminal laws, pointing out that the original jurisdiction
in felony cases was confined to the district
courts, which were required to be held only at certain
periods, with long intervals between, while there were
few prisons in which to detain the offenders. He
suggested conferring criminal jurisdiction upon the
court of sessions for some counties, and requiring
them to hold frequent terms, with called terms when
necessary to try a criminal, giving the right of appeal.
He recommended that for grand larceny and robbery
the punishment should be death until the state should
be provided with county prisons and a penitentiary.
" The crime of grand larceny, in stealing horses and
cattle, has become so common in many places," says
the message, "as to diminish their value fifty per
HIST. CAL., VOL. VII. IB