[36]
How could a man be convicted of a more clearly
unconstitutional proposal, or of drafting a resolution more outrageously than in
this fashion? You had two phrases at your disposal: “if any man
kill,” directed against a person under accusation, and “if
any man be a murderer, directed against a culprit found guilty; yet in your
description you adopted the expression that applies to a man accused, while you
propose for untried culprits a penalty which the law does not permit even after
conviction. You have eliminated the intermediate process, for between accusation
and conviction comes a trial.—There is not a word about trial in the
decree proposed by the defendant.
Demosthenes. Demosthenes with an English translation by A. T. Murray, Ph.D., LL.D. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1939.
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