Conviction

“ How is it possible that conviction can find its way to our hearts, when we hear the absurd language, and witness the acts of iniquity, of the greatest number of those whose business it is to preach to us? ”

“ Already a conviction has been obtained against me for my opinions on this same event; for it is not one arrow alone that has been shot from the crown office quiver at me—at my reputation, my property, my liberty. In a few hours more my voice will be silenced; but before the world is shut out from me for a term, I appeal to your verdict—to the verdict of my fellow-citizens—of my fellow-countrymen—to judge my life, my conduct, my acts, my principles and say am I a criminal. Sedition, in a rightly ordered community, is indeed a crime. ”

“ Imagine a grey-headed judge, full of years and honours, owning with tears, with pathetic assurances of his penitence and of his sincerity, that he has been guilty of shameful malpractices, repeatedly asseverating the truth of his confession, subscribing it with his own hand, submitting to conviction, receiving a humiliating sentence and acknowledging its justice, and all this when he has it in his power to show that his conduct has been irreproachable! ”

“ I see distinctly, now, that they rest on foundations in man himself, which nothing can overthrow or shake. A conviction is brought home to me that I am standing on an everlasting rock. Formerly there might have been some lurking germ of suspicion or misgiving that I was standing on ground that was not quite defensible. Universal history, rightly understood, dissipates these enfeebling misgivings, and generates that invaluable conviction. ”

“ Where the involuntariness of a confession is conclusively demonstrated at any stage of a trial, the defendant is deprived of due process by entry of judgment of conviction without exclusion of the confession. ”

“ The wretch stained with crime—polluted with iniquity—for which, perhaps, the statute-book contains neither name nor indictment—whose trembling lips are eager to avow that guilt which, by confessing, he hopes may alleviate the penalty—this man, I say, is checked in his intentions—he is warned not, by any chance expression, to hazard a conviction of his crime, and told in the language of the law not to criminate himself. ”

“ Wherefore he saith, “But let each man prove himself, and then let him approach.” And he bids not one examine another, but each himself, making the tribunal not a public one and the conviction without a witness. ”

“ Be assured that every guilty man will be convicted at the bar of public opinion, and from that conviction there will be no appeal and no escape; they will be known and branded for life, each and every one. ”

“ It is our deep and settled conviction, confirmed by a re-examination of the authorities under the responsibility of taking part in the consideration and decision of the capital case now before the court, that the jury, upon the general issue of guilty or not guilty in a criminal case, have the right, as well as the power, to decide, according to their own judgment and consciences, all questions, whether of law or of fact, involved in that issue. ”

“ Let us confirm ourselves in this resolve by the conviction, which is easily to be attained, that in spite of all the trouble we take, we shall never do right in the eyes of our accusers, unless we cease entirely to be ourselves, which is the same thing as ceasing to exist at all. ”

“ The other man he quarrelled with has to give evidence against him; whole families come down to the court and swear against each other till they become bitter enemies. If there is a conviction the man who is convicted never forgives. ”

“ If a conviction take place, whether an indictment be good or otherwise, it is ten to one that judgment passes; for, if he read the bill, it is not probable he will have penetration enough to discern its defects. ”

“ If in the question which is now to receive a solemn and we trust final decision, if we have been deceived reflection would point out that conduct should be resorted to, which was the best calculated to produce conviction on our minds. ”

“ That 'mysterious something' is just printed persuasion and its other name is 'selling conviction.' Conviction can be imparted at will by those few writers who have closely studied the thought processes by which conviction is induced. ”

“ If two credible Persons shall affirm upon Oath that they have seen the party accused speaking such words, or doing things which none but such as have Familiarity with the Devil ever did or can do, that's a sufficient Ground for Conviction. ”

“ In a civilized, christian, and free community, the monstrous principle has been assumed, that accusation and conviction are synonymous; and that the persons who deliberately bring forward an atrocious charge are exempted from all obligations to substantiate it! ”

“ Undoubtedly every man who sat on the tribunal had the conviction that any leaning to the accused would expose him to English vengeance, and it was found necessary to impose a fine on any one who should absent himself from a single session. ”

“ And yet, that is as much as the Testimony of another Wizzard, who only by the Devil's help reveals the Witch.
XII. If a man, being dangerously sick, and like to dye, [Pg 32] upon Suspicion, will take it on his Death, that such a one hath bewitched him, it is an Allegation of the same nature, which may move the Judge to examine the Party, but it is of no moment for Conviction.
XIII. Among the sufficient means of Conviction, the first is, the free and voluntary Confession of the Crime, made by the party suspected and accused, after Examination. ”

“ Should not the example of the law be followed, which is so tender in criminal cases, that delinquents are often found not guilty, for want of legal evidence, at the same time that the court, the jury, and every one present at the trial feel the strongest moral conviction of their guilt? ”

“ A summary trial, with few, if any, escapes from conviction, followed by immediate execution, is the fate of those arrested on either side on suspicion of infidelity to the cause of the party making the arrest. ”

“ Note, As soon as ever God by his Spirit convinces our consciences of any sin or duty we must immediately set in with the conviction, and prosecute it, as those that are not ashamed to own our former mistake. ”

“ “and much the same thing I have heard from persons in pursuits different from yours—from the lawyer, from the congressman, from the editor, not to mention others, each, with a strange kind of melancholy vanity, claiming for his vocation the distinction of affording the surest inlets to the conviction that man is no better than he should be. All of which testimony, if reliable, would, by mutual corroboration, justify some disturbance in a good man’s mind. ”

“ 'But indeed Conviction, were it never so excellent, is worthless till it convert itself into Conduct. ”

“ As the sudden flash of the lightning will sometimes disclose what in the long blaze of noonday has escaped the beholder, so will conviction break unexpectedly upon the human mind from some slight but striking circumstance which comes with the irresistible force of unpremeditated truthfulness. From that moment it was clear the jury to a man were with Darby. ”

“ Convictions are permanent, unchangeable ideas: based on facts and supported by satisfactory evidence, they rest on the bed-rock of truth. Few minds indeed, particularly on the larger and fundamental issues, can claim the right to convictions. ”

“ To any one unaccustomed to these efforts, the effect produced is almost miraculous: conviction steals in from so many sources, that the mind, like a city assaulted on every side, is captured almost at once. ”

“ Larger Image CRYSTAL LAKE AND BEULAH FROM BENZONIA
[Pg 12]
II SOME CONVICTIONS OUT OF WHICH THE VISION CAME A conviction is a great thing. It is the egg out of which all great enterprises are hatched. Almost everything that is worth while was once wrapped up in a conviction. Abraham had a conviction that he ought to obey God’s leading. He took his journey to the “land that he knew not of,” and we have as the result the Hebrew race, and all that has come out of it for the world.
The vision of which I am telling the story was at first only a conviction. ”

“ That these three differ exceedingly from each other, may be seen without explanation: for a man, from rational conviction according to circumstances and contingencies, may acquit a person, whom a judge, when he sits in judgement, cannot acquit from the law: and also a judge may acquit a person, who after death is condemned. ”

“ On the other hand, the conviction is well founded, which the sight of noble conduct calls forth, that the spirit of love, which enjoins one man to spare his enemy, and another to protect at the risk of his life some one whom he has never seen before, can never pass away and become nothing. ”

“ which ought seldom, if ever, to be decided in the affirmative, in a doubtful case.' 'The opposition between the constitution and the law should be such, that the judge feels a clear and strong conviction of their incompatibility with each other.' And in the Dartmouth College case, 4 Wheat. ”

“ The jury might convict, the judge sentence, the President issue his warrant, and the man be hanged in twenty-four hours, for doing a deed which the Constitution itself allows, and Christendom daily practises, and the convictions of two hundred million men require! ”

“ Conversely, and in the second place, all crimes are not public wrongs. Most of the very numerous offences that are now punishable on summary conviction may be prosecuted at the suit of a private person ”

“ But in stating prudential rules for our government in society I must not omit the important one of never entering into dispute or argument with another. I never yet saw an instance of one of two disputants convincing the other by argument. I have seen many, of their getting warm, becoming rude, and shooting one another. Conviction is the effect of our own dispassionate reasoning, either in solitude, or weighing within ourselves, dispassionately, what we hear from others, standing uncommitted in argument ourselves. ”

“ Here I must observe, that this great Man seems rather to complain of the hardship of the Law, in taking away the Life of a Criminal on the Testimony of an Accomplice, than to deny that the Law was so. ”

“ In war-time on the field or in the fleet, a mortal punishment decreed by a drum-head court--on the field sometimes decreed by but a nod from the General--follows without delay on the heel of conviction without appeal. ”

“ In Chambers the voluntariness of the confessions was properly considered by this Court both because the alleged coercion producing the confessions appeared to carry over to taint the guilty pleas and because the convictions were based on the confessions as well as the guilty pleas. ”

“ Convictions are prisons. They never see far enough, they do not look down from a sufficient height: but in order to have any [Pg 210] say in questions of value and non-value, a man must see five hundred convictions beneath him,—behind him.... ”

“ I do, then, declare my conviction, and wish it may{59} stand recorded to posterity, that there never was a bad man that had ability for good service. ”

“ There is no Branch of the Law more bulky, more full of Confusion and Contradiction, I had almost said of Absurdity, than the Law of Evidence as it now stands.
One Rule of this Law is, that no Man interested shall be sworn as a Witness. By this is meant pecuniary Interest; but are Mankind governed by no other Passion than Avarice? Is not Revenge the sweetest Morsel, as a Divine calls it, which the Devil ever dropped into the Mouth of a Sinner? ”

“ Our decisions under that Amendment have made clear that convictions following the admission into evidence of confessions which are involuntary, i.e., the product of coercion, either physical or psychological, cannot stand. This is so not because such confessions are unlikely to be true but because the methods used to extract them offend an underlying principle in the enforcement of our criminal law: ”

“ Even if the paraphernalia of justice,—the judge, and the jury, and the lawyers, could be induced to declare her innocent before all men, must she not confess her guilt to him,—to that one,—for whose verdict alone she cared? ”

“ Well, 'tis true you seem made after such a prescription;
But it does not do justice, as I can assure ye.
I'll remand you till eve, when assemble the jury,
And then if this gown that I've bought you'll appear in,
The verdict of guilty I'm certain of hearing:
For all of your guests will of envy be dying,—
The women, because you their charms are out-vieing;
The men, 'cause I've won you while vain they were trying. ”