Mob law

JACKSON

Posted By: Ken Wright (email)
Date: 2/22/2008 at 15:28:15

Jackson Sentinel, June 13, 1885.

Mob law and the death penalty.

The Chicago Tribune, like many other papers, is of the opinion that if regularly constituted courts in Iowa did more hanging, Judge Lynch would be called upon less frequently. There is force in this statement though capital punishment will never altogether satisfy the mob. Mob law is generally the absence of law and the death penalty judicially decreed signifies an impartial trial by jury.

The Tribune’s observation is this:

The recent exhibition of mob law in Iowa only repeats a familiar experience. It is about 25 years since the extreme penalty of the law has been legally inflicted on any murderer in that state. The death penalty is never enforced by the courts, and hence mobs are frequently formed to see its execution. The disposition of the people is to make death the penalty of murder whether the courts are of this way of thinking or not. Such an action of course merits condemnation, but it raises the question whether mob violence would not largely disappear if the courts were more efficient in punishing crime.