Jasper County Democrat, Volume 11, Number 83, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 March 1909 — SOMETHING’S WRONG. [ARTICLE]

SOMETHING’S WRONG.

What kind of Judges have we got in this country, anyway? Judge Landis fined the Standard Oil Company $29,240,000 for violating the railroad rebate law. A court of review sent the case back for a new trial, and then Judge Anderson ruled that the Standard Oil Company is not guilty at all. There is such a vast stretch between a fine of $29,240,000 and a verdict of "not guilty" that the average man back in the court-room is constrained to sit up and take notice. Unquestionably, there is something wrong about this Standard Oil case. It Is not possible for two well-educated, Ju-dicial-minded men to be $29,240,000 apart on a proposition. When Judge Landis found the Standard guilty, and ground out the maximum fine, the greatest in the history of Judicial proceedure, he was either playing to the galleries or else he made hie poorest guess a Judge has ever been guilty of. This of course, providing Judge Anderson is not the man who was playing to the galleries or else making the poorest of judicial guesses when he held that the Standard is innocent. There is a senegambian in the wood-pile, somewhere, or else our federal judges need revising. What must the average man think of his chances of securing justice in the courts where two judges fall so far apart as Landis and Anderson have in the Standard Oil Company. More than that and more, these federal judges hold their jobs for life, or judges hold their jobs for life, or a untll congress impeaches them, a thing which has never been done. Respect for law is greatly lessened *y when such cases as the Standard Oil Company are more fully understood by the people. There is criminal incompetence somewhere in this instance.—Starke County Republican.