People v. Stewart

Murray, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court.

On the trial of this cause in the Court below, one of the jurors was asked if he entertained such conscientious opinions, where the offence charged was punishable with death, as would preclude him from finding the defendant guilty; to which he answered, that he was “ opposed to capital punishment on principle.” He was then challenged by the District Attorney for cause, and the challenge sustained.

The three hundred and forty-seventh section, subdivision nine of the criminal code, Compiled Laws, 466, provides, that a person shall neither be permitted or compelled to serve as a juror where the offence charged is punishable with death and he entertains such conscientious opinions as would preclude him from finding the prisoner guilty.

The first question which presents itself for consideration is, whether the answer of the juror was responsive to the interrogatory and disclosed any disqualification on his part.

There is an important difference between conscience and principle. Conscience is defined by Webster to be, “ internal or self-knowledge, or judgment of right and wrong, or the faculty, power or principle within us, which decides on the lawfulness or unlawfulness of our own actions and affections, and instantly approves or condemns them; conscience is called by some writers, the moral sense, and considered as an original faculty of our nature.” Principle he also defines to be, in a general sense, “ the cause, source, or origin of anything; that from which a thing proceeds, as the principle of motion, the principles of action; ground, foundation, that which supports an assertion, an action, or a series of actions, or of reasoning; a general truth; a law comprehending many subordinate truths, as the principles of morality, of law, of government,” etc.

In the language of the learned counsel for the appellant, “ the one is the result of judgment, is tested by reason, defended by argument, and yields to the decision of an intelligent mind. The other springs from some internal source of self-knowledge, which acknowledges no superior, bows to no authority, yields to no demonstration, and is governed by no law; it ignores reason, defies argument, and is unaccountable and irresponsible to all human tests and standards; it is a law unto itself, and its scruples, and its teachings are not amenable to human tribunals, but rests alone with its possessor and his God.”

All writers on moral philosophy make this same distinction. In fact, in very many cases, conscience and principle have no connection whatever, and a man may be opposed on principle to what he conscientiously believes to be right. Many men are