I am convinced that so long as Congress leaves the selection of jurors
to the local authorities it will be futile to make any effort to enforce
laws not acceptable to a majority of the people of the Territory, or
which interfere with local prejudices or provide for the punishment of
polygamy or any of its affiliated vices or crimes.
I presume that Congress, in passing upon the subject, will provide all
reasonable and proper safeguards to secure honest and impartial jurors,
whose verdicts will command confidence and be a guaranty of equal
protection to all good and law-abiding citizens, and at the same time
make it understood that crime can not be committed with impunity.
I have before said that while the laws creating the several Territories
have generally contained uniform provisions in respect to the judiciary,
yet Congress has occasionally varied these provisions in minor details,
as the circumstances of the Territory affected seemed to demand;
and in creating the Territory of Utah Congress evidently thought that
circumstances there might require judicial remedies not necessary in
other Territories, for by section 9 of the act creating that Territory
it is provided that a writ of error may be brought from the decision
of any judge of the supreme or district court of the Territory to the
Supreme Court of the United States upon any writ of _habeas corpus_
involving the question of personal freedom--a provision never inserted
in any other Territorial act except that creating the Territory of
New Mexico.
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