REPORT TO HIS EXCELLENCY THE GOVERNOR, ON PRISONS, PRISON DISCIPLINE, AND THE CRIMINAL LAW, BY THE ATTORNEY GENERAL.
Columbia, S.C. R.W. Gibbes, State Printer, 1852. 24pp, stitched. Untrimmed, minor edgewear, generously margined, light toning and foxing. Very Good.
A rare, early, informative Report on prisons and South Carolina's criminal law. The Report recommends changes in the penal law; not, Hayne assures, from "sympathy with the spirit of indiscriminate and sweeping innovation, which to some extent is the characteristic of the age, and which absolutely runs riot in many of the States of this Confederacy." South Carolina has a low crime rate: "more than half of our population, and the portion amongst whom, from their position, crime would naturally most abound, are slaves, who are kept in order without a resort to the Courts." But he fears an "alarming" rise in crime in Charleston. Urging greater efficiency "in detecting crime," he recommends employing prosecutors in each district and "physicians for post mortem examinations in murder cases."
Hayne wants to streamline outmoded judicial procedures, allow appeals "in cases not capital, only on cause shown," to curtail the power of pardon [with standards to guide issuance of pardons], to curb the most wretched prison conditions, particularly housing "the arrested debtor and the innocent witness" with "the convicted felon"; and to provide separate cells at night and employ prisoners in shoemaking and other useful tasks. An Appendix prints valuable data on the prison population of South Carolina.
III Turnbull 143. Cohen 4567. Not in Harv. Law Cat. or Marke. OCLC 8348549 [3- Harvard, U Chi., U SC] as of August 2020. Item #21535
Price: $750.00