Courts gone to hell

The courts in Utah, for instance. Once high-class tribunals, where Gentiles (few and far between) were barred from jury duty and every Judge stood high up in the Mormon church, had as the years passed plummeted to hell. On the bench and in the jury box now sat formless voids of primordial matter, Democrats, Catholics, wild-haired atheists, Trade Unionists, Masons. A man hadn’t a chance. “Two years’ hard labor, step down”—bang! with the gavel. Chains, the iron ball, convict stripes even on your hat. No appeal either! to anyone, even in a case where the excess “wife” in evidence was not the defendant’s wife at all but only the hired girl to a wife. So that just goes to show the rottenness.
     --From Variation West