Third, a trial which lasts for a long time naturally results
in creating in the jury's mind an exaggerated idea of the
prisoner's rights, namely, the presumption of innocence and
the benefit of the reasonable doubt. For every time that the
jury will hear these phrases once in a petty larceny or
forgery case, they will hear them in a lengthy murder trial a
hundred times. They see the defendant day after day, and the
relation becomes more personal. Their responsibility seems
greater toward him than toward the defendant in petty cases.

Last, as previously suggested, murder cases are apt to be
inherently weaker than others, and more often depend upon
circumstantial evidence.

The results of such cases are therefore an inadequate test of
the efficiency of a jury system. They are, in fact, the
precise cases where, if at all, the jury might be expected to
go wrong.

But juries would go astray far less frequently even in such
trials were it not for that most vicious factor in the
administration of criminal justice--the "yellow" journal. For
the impression that public trials are the scenes of buffoonery
and brutality is due to the manner in which these trials are
exploited by the sensational papers.

The instant that a sensational homicide occurs, the aim of the
editors of these papers is--not to see that a swift and sure
retribution is visited upon the guilty, or that a prompt and
unqualified vindication is accorded to the innocent, but, on