While the law’s delays in criminal cases are probably not so great as they are popularly believed to be, the popular impression being due to over-emphasis of flagrant cases,[331] still the fact that such an impression is a prevalent one makes it extremely easy for a community to countenance the summary and illegal punishment of the perpetrator of a crime which has been particularly shocking to the community, a crime for which many persons in the community really feel that no punishment can be quite adequate. A case in point is that of the lynching of George White, colored, at Wilmington, Delaware, on June 22, 1903. A refusal by the judges to grant an immediate trial on the ground that the accused could not then have a fair and impartial trial because of the excited state of public feeling, was publicly urged as a reason for the people taking the law into their own hands and “upholding the majesty of the law.” The outcome was that White was burned at the stake and those who participated in the lynching were allowed to go free, the coroner’s jury returning a verdict that the deceased came to his death at the hands of persons unknown. It is in this way that the popular idea that the law’s delays are so great as frequently to defeat the ends of justice, whether it have much or little basis in fact,[332] contributes to the continuance of the practice of lynching. If to abolish the right of appeal in criminal cases, or to limit it to a considerable extent, will further the ends of justice, as there seems to be good reason for believing that it will, such a step will have a tendency to check lynching by making void one of the excuses most frequently urged in extenuation of the practice. Lynching is a phenomenon in American society too deeply rooted to be destroyed by merely taking away the right of appeal in criminal cases, but that a measure will render less plausible a prominent excuse for its existence and continuance makes such a measure worthy of serious consideration.