Felon

“ How on that occasion I admired your lordship's judgment and eloquence! Society would be dissolved if an innocent man were not hanged! Ha!—ha!—ha! Capital!—capital!" shouted the ferocious felon with demoniac glee, as he marked the effect of his words on the countenance of the judge.
"Remove the prisoner!" cried the sheriff. An officer was about to do so; but the judge motioned him to desist. ”

“ In one of Her Majesty’s prisons a young man—a felon, with the bearing of a gentleman and the garb of a convict—counts the years as they go by and wonders what justice there can be in heaven that a cruel fate should raise this bar of shame between him and the young wife he loves. ”

“ The circumstances, my lord, and gentlemen of the jury, which have brought the prisoner before you this day, involve a long catalogue of crimes that as far transcend, in the hideousness of their guilt, the offences of a common felon as his rank and position in life do that of the humblest villain who ever stood before a court of justice. ”

“ Each felon draws a whistling breath, "Time's up with Colt! he's done The sheriff looks his watch again, Then puts it in his fob, And turns him to the hangman,— "Get ready for the job." The jailer knocketh loudly, The turnkey draws the bolt, And pleasantly the sheriff says, "We're waiting, Mister Colt!" No answer! no! no answer! All's still as death within; The sheriff eyes the jailer, The jailer strokes his chin. ”

“ They are right in this much—that their own ingenuity is a faithful representative of that of the mass; but when the cunning of the individual felon is diverse in character from their own, the felon foils them, of course. ”

“ I am almost tempted to say that I hope it may be, for fear I may next have to see you in a felon's cell, or perhaps on the gallows, as I can only expect a dark and terrible fate for you. I have done all that lay in my power to make a decent man of you, and what are you? A hunted fugitive, disguised to evade an officer who seeks to arrest you for some crime, for such I understand now to be the mission of the man who has been here inquiring for you. ”

“ "For it is very hard, my lord," said a convicted felon at the bar to the late excellent judge Burnet, "to hang a poor man for stealing a horse." "You are not to be hanged sir," answered my ever-honored and beloved friend, "for stealing a horse, but you are to be hanged that horses may not be stolen." ”

“ When the felon awoke out of the deathlike trance into which this assault had thrown him, his hardihood was gone; and he was reconveyed to the cell, in which he was destined agonizingly to struggle out his last hideous and distorted hours, in a state of abject horror which cannot be described. He who felt nothing—knew nothing—had now his eyes opened with terrible clearness to one object—the livid phantasma of a strangling death. All the rest was convulsive despair and darkness. Thought shudders at it—but let me go on,
[He visits the murderer in prison, accompanied by the clergyman.] ”

“ An accessory after the fact is when a person, knowing a felony to have been committed, receives, relieves, comforts, or assists him whom he knows to be the felon. He must know that the felon is guilty to make him an accessory. ”

“ My fainting, I presume, saved my life, for the felon was in that state of maniacal desperation which nothing but a perfect unresistingness could have evaded.
After this, the first sensation I can recall is that of awakening out of that state of stupor into which exhaustion and agitation had thrown me. Shall I ever forget it? The anxiety of some of my friends had brought them early to the gaol; and the unusual noises which had been heard by some of its miserable inmates occasioned, I believe, the door of the cell in which we were to be unlocked before the intended hour. ”

“ Thirdly, So far are Men from being animated with the Hopes of public Praise to apprehend a Felon, that they are even discouraged by the Fear of Shame. The Person of the Informer is in Fact more odious than that of the Felon himself; and the Thief-catcher is in Danger of worse Treatment from the Populace than the Thief. ”

“ Here are confined men charged with every offense, from rioting to murder. Oftentimes these extremes are found together in the interior court of the prison, where the felon, with his hands steeped in innocent blood, is entertaining a crowd of novices in crime with the details of his adventures, and of his many hair-breadth escapes from the cruel officers of the law. He is as eloquent in giving lessons to novices as his compeers in our own prisons, and he carefully instructs his hopeful pupils in the best ways of avenging their wrongs upon society. ”

“ As the governor closed the gate he ran with all speed to the cell, he darted in, and then the thief saw what made the three honest men laugh so. He saw it, and started back with a cry of dismay, for the sight chilled the felon to the bone.
A lad about fifteen years of age was pinned against the wall in agony by a leathern belt passed round his shoulders and drawn violently round two staples in the wall. His arms were jammed against his sides by a straight waistcoat fastened with straps behind, and those straps drawn with the utmost severity. ”

“ Being men of natural refinement, they felt more keenly than the common felon the indignity of having to strip and be searched four times a day; and, as they were unwise enough to show this reluctance, the coarse warders of the prison took an especial delight in inflicting it upon them. ”

“ Telegraph-wires and officers of the law are of little avail here in running down a felon; and if a person keeps on his guard, and stays upon the range away from the towns, there is no danger of ever being taken. ”

“ The doctor waved his pistol in the air contemptuously.
“There are two ways of making you hold your tongue,” he said. “The first is shooting you; the second is making a felon of you. On consideration, after what you have said, the risk in either case seems about equal. I am naturally a humane man; your family have done me no injury; I will not be the cause of their losing money; I won’t take your life, I’ll have your character. We are all felons on this floor of the house. You have come among us—you shall be one of us. ”

“ These are the years most prolific of criminals. Who can say these boys are vicious and hardened criminals? Then follow the young men of from twenty-five to thirty. Three hundred and fourty-four of this age find a home in felon cells. Are these boys and young men not worth saving? What can be done to snatch them from a career of crime, and to save them from becoming miserable wrecks? ”

“ The young criminal is, by kind monitions and encouraging confidence, to be lured from the path into which he has been seduced, and the felon is to be made to understand that there is a hope of regaining the respect of society by that repentance which consists as much in reparation for the wrong and resolves for the future, as in regret for the past ”

“ FELO DE SE (M.L. a felon, i.e. murderer, of himself) , one who commits murder upon himself. The technical conditions of murder apply to this crime; e.g., “if one commits any unlawful malicious act, the consequence of which is his own death, as if attempting to kill another he runs upon his antagonist’s sword, or shooting at another the gun bursts and kills himself,” he is a felo de se. The horror inspired by this crime led to the revolting punishment of an “ignominious burial on the highway, with a stake driven through the body.” ”

“ If some notorious felon, red with half-a-dozen murders, and who, having broken jail, left an empty noose in the hands of the hangman, had taken it into his head to return and offer himself up for instant execution to the aforesaid hangman, and eke to the sheriff, we assert that neither sheriff nor hangman, nor hangman nor sheriff, arrange them as you may, could feel a thousandth part of the astonishment which seized Sir Thomas Gourlay on learning the fact conveyed to him by Gibson. ”

“ The sleuths I knew were exceedingly sorry for criminals, and often slipped them money when they were hard up and trying to go straight. This sympathy for the felon is in striking contrast with the contempt of the whole police force for the stool pigeon, the treacherous little creature who gives his mates away. The force may use him, but the police know him to be unsportsmanlike and are disgusted. They like people to play fair. ”

“ The law enjoins it as a duty on the officer to kill a felon, rather than permit his escape, upon the presumption, I suppose, that if he do escape, he will forever elude the penalty of his crime. Such is not the case with a runaway slave, who, in general, may be certainly recaptured. ”

“ Thirdly, Officers of public Justice may justify the Arrest of a Felon by Virtue of their Office, without any Warrant. Whatever therefore a private Person may do as above, will certainly be justifiable in them. ”

“ You know, though a felon go forth of the jail, when he is going to the bar for his arraignment, yet he is not out of prison, or out of his irons for that; his fetters are still making a noise on his heels,9 and the thoughts of what he is to hear by and by from the judge, is still frighting and afflicting his heart; death, like some evil spirit or ghost, doth continually haunt him, and playeth the butcher continually in his soul and conscience, with frights and fears about the thoughts of the sudden, and insupportable after-clap, by and by he is to meet withal. ”

“ Anyone receiving or buying goods they know to be stolen or who harbors or conceals any burglars, felons, or thieves knowing them to be such shall be taken as accessory to the felony and shall suffer death as punishment if the principal felon is convicted. ”

“ Now we contend, that the ignorant felon, and such he is apt to be, in all countries, where there is but little diffusion of knowledge, and especially of religious knowledge, when again let loose upon the community, whether by a full pardon, or by serving out his term, returns, commonly, to his evil courses, as surely as the dog to his vomit, or the sow to her wallowing in the mire. ”

“ There is a large portion of our population not technically criminals, which is interested in maintaining this criminal class. Every felon is a part of a vast network of criminality. He has his dependents, his allies, his society of vice, all the various machinery of temptation and indulgence.
It happens, therefore, that there is great sympathy with the career of the lawbreakers, many people are hanging on them for support, and among them the so-called criminal lawyers. ”

“ Have done with the idea that instinctive, habitual felons, amenable both to the menace and machinations of many other instinctive, habitual felons, whom they must sooner or later face in free life, can be trusted to preside over the destinies of a prison population. ”

“ When a Hue and Cry is raised, every private Man is not only justified in pursuing; but may be obliged by Command of the Constable to pursue the Felon, and is punishable, if he disobey, by Fine and Imprisonment. [21] And in this Case whether a Felony was committed or not, or whether the Person arrested (provided he be the Person named or described by the Hue and Cry) be guilty or innocent, or of evil or good Fame, the Arrest is lawful and justifiable, and he who raised the Hue and Cry is alone to answer for the Justice of it. ”

“ The result of legislative changes is that at the present time the only practical distinctions between felony and misdemeanour are:—
1. That a private person may arrest a felon without judicial authority and that bail on arrest is granted as a matter of discretion and not as of right. ”

“ The man who offers it becomes an accused felon (for the Secretary of War too sublime and vigorous for the slow-paced decencies of law holds that felony is a something not necessarily determined by the sentence of a Jury, but dependent on his individual opinion) the man who offers it becomes an accused felon. ”

“ The rule of the common law, that a peace officer or a private citizen may arrest a felon without a warrant, has been generally held by the courts of the several states to be in force in cases of felony punishable by the civil tribunals. ”

“ Indeed a private Person may justify the Arrest of an Offender by the Command of a Peace Officer; for he is bound to be aiding and assisting to such Officer, is punishable for his Refusal, and is consequently under the Protection of the Law. [25]
Lastly, A private Person may arrest a Felon by Virtue of a Warrant directed to him: for though he is not bound to execute such Warrant, yet if he doth, it is good and justifiable. ”

“ There are likewise some single cells—hovels clustering under a wall, in which criminals who can afford to pay the jailer for them may enjoy the luxury of solitude. In each ward there is a single unfettered man—always a felon—who by reason either of bribery or good conduct, is appointed to the place of watchman or spy among his fellows in crime. There is a turnkey for each ward, and these men, with the unchained felons who act as watchmen, torture new arrivals in order to force money from them, and under this process some die. ”

“ What, says More in a pleasant manner, do you charge any of us with felony? the judge beginning to be angry, our facetious author desired the felon, to return his purse, and advised the old man never to be so bitter against innocent men's negligence, when he himself could not keep his purse safe in that open assembly. ”

“ Could it be possible that only a few short weeks ago he who now stood there, so rich in all that makes life beautiful, had been a hunted felon on whose head a price had been set Incredible as it seemed, it was yet but too true. If proof positive were needed there was his arm still in a sling to furnish it. ”