Life of Albert Parsons

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his answer that he can render a fair and impartial verdict, or find there from that he has the qualification of impartiality, as required by the constitution. * * * *

"Under such circumstances, it is idle to inquire of the jurors whether they can return just and impartial verdicts. The more clear and positive were their impressions of guilt, the more certain they may be that they can act impartially in condemning the guilty party. They go into the box in' a state of mind that is well calculated to give a color of guilt to all evidence, and if the accused escapes conviction, it will not be because the evidence has not established guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, but because an accused party condemned in advance, and called upon to exculpate himself before a prejudiced tribunal, has succeeded in doing so. * * * *

"To try a cause by such a jury is to authorize men, who state that they will lean in their finding against one of the parties, unjustly to determine the rights of others, and it will be no difficult task to predict, even before the evidence was heard, the verdict that would be rendered. Nor can it be said that instructions from the court would correct the bias of the jurors who swear they incline in favor of one of the litigants. * **

"Bontecou (one of the jurors in the Cronin case), it is true, was brought to make answer that he could render a fair and impartial verdict in accordance with the law and the evidence, but that result was reached only after a singularly argumentative and persuasive cross-examination by the court, in which the right of every person accused of crime to an impartial trial and to the presumption of innocence until proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and the duty of every citizen, when summoned as a juror, to lay aside all opinions and prejudices and accord the accused such a trial, was set forth and descanted upon at length, and in which the intimation was very clearly made that a juror who could not do this was recreant to his duty as a man and a citizen. Under pressure of this sort of cross-examination, Bontecou seems to have been finally brought to make answer in such a way as to profess an ability to sit as an impartial juror, and on his so answering he was pronounced competent and the challenge as to him was overruled. Whatever may be the weight ordinarily due to statements of this character of jurors, their value as evidence is in no small degree impaired in this case by the mode in which they were, in a certain sense, forced from the mouth of the juror. The theory seemed to be, that if a juror could in any way be brought to answer that he could sit as an impartial juror, that declaration of itself rendered him competent. Such a view, if it was entertained, was a total misconception of the law. * * *

"It requires no profound knowledge of human nature to know that with ordinary men opinions and prejudices are not amenable to the power of the will, however honest the intention of the party may be to put them aside. They are likely to remain in the mind of the juror in spite of all his efforts to get rid of them, warping and giving direction to his judgment, coloring the fact, as they are developed by the evidence, and exerting an influence more or less