Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 January 1894 — This Seems an Outrage. [ARTICLE]

This Seems an Outrage.

There is a queer kind of justice in this world. A lawyer in New York, Francis Henry Weeks, who embezzled over $1,000,000 from the widows and orphans whose fortunes lay in his hands, was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment in Sing Sing. Then a little lad, not yet out of his teens, was sentenced to fifteen years in the tame prison for having stolen a watch, chain and locket, the value of which was $75. This may be lawyers’ justice, but it doesn’t seem the justice of common sense nor is it tinged with one streak of Christianity. Sentencing the arch betrayer of widows and orphans and the embezzler of $1,000,000 to undergo a less severe sentence than that inflicted on a youthful and an ignorant boy is not the way to impress the American people or anybody else that we are living under equal laws. Sing Sing is a fit place for Lawyer Weeks; a reformatory should be the place for the youthful stealer of a watch, locket and chain.