The legislature of North Carolina in the year 1893 passed an act which provided that every person who should conspire to break or enter, or who should engage in breaking or entering, any jail or place of confinement of prisoners for the purpose of killing or injuring any person confined therein would be guilty of a felony and be punishable by a fine of not less than five hundred dollars and by imprisonment for not less than two nor more than fifteen years. It was made the duty of the prosecuting officer of the judicial district in which such a crime had been committed to take immediate proceedings against the guilty parties, and jurisdiction of the offense was conferred upon the superior court of any county adjoining that in which the violence was committed. It was also made a misdemeanor punishable by fine and imprisonment, one or both, at the discretion of the court, for a witness wilfully to fail to comply with the process served on him, or, after being sworn, to refuse to answer questions pertinent to the matter being investigated; nor was any person to be excused from testifying on the ground that his evidence might tend to criminate himself, for when he should be thus examined as a witness for the State he became altogether pardoned of any and all participation in the crime concerning which he was required to testify. The entire cost incurred in the prosecution was to be paid by the county in which the crime was committed, and in case the commissioners of the county failed to provide a sufficient guard for a jail in response to the request of the sheriff, and the jail should be entered and a prisoner killed, the county became responsible in damages to be recovered by the personal representatives of the prisoner killed.[283] In the year 1895 the General Assembly of Georgia enacted additional legislation on the subject of lynching by passing an act which made penal the offense of hindering, obstructing, or interfering with sheriffs or their deputies or constables in the execution of any order or sentence of court after trial in criminal cases, and requiring sheriffs and constables to present to the grand jury any and all persons so interfering. Penalties were provided for the offense and for failure to comply with the provisions of the act, power being given the governor to suspend a derelict sheriff or constable and to declare his office vacant.[284]