Q2 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
complicity who being cognizant of a crime, maintains silence or shrinks from giving testimony. The most effectual enforcement of the laws will result from laying upon each local community the responsibility of securing its own protection against crime. Municipal action is likely to be more drastic and effective than any system by which the duty of detection and arrest is centered in some department of the state government.
THE TRIAL OF PERSONS ACCUSED OF CRIME
From the delegation to the municipality of power to enact ordinances the violation of which is a misdemeanor, it is a nat- ural step to invest the municipal courts with power to try, and to pronounce sentence upon, those who disobey such ordinances. The culprit in such case is an offender against the municipality, which ought, logically to be clothed with jurisdiction to enforce its own enactments. The liberty of the individual is sufficiently protected if in every case an appeal lies from the municipal courts to those of the state.
But the case of persons accused of violating the penal laws of the state is widely different. Such a person, if guilty, is an offender against the state, and should be dealt with solely by the courts of the state. The state has no higher function than to guard the personal liberty of every law-abiding citizen on the one hand, and on the other to protect the whole community against crime. When a person accused is brought to trial, he is the defendant, with the presumption of innocence in his favor, and the people of the state are the plaintiffs; if the accused be innocent, his right of personal liberty is put at jeopardy by the trial; if he is guilty, the safety of the whole community is at stake in the trial. When issues of such momentous importance are involved, the state is called upon to use the highest powers that pertain to its sovereignty; it has no right to delegate such powers and duties to any inferior tribunal. The courts of the state, embodying the supreme judicial power of the state, are alone competent to assume the responsibility of deciding whether a person has violated a penal law of the state a responsibility equally great whether the judgment be one of conviction or of acquittal.
