Defendants are occasionally convicted, though the verdicts are usually rendered for manslaughter and not for murder.
Public sentiment is not yet ready, however, to declare every intentional homicide murder.

Some point to the low rate of white illegitimacy as a justification of the deterring force of the "unwritten law," not realizing that such a defense it, really a reflection upon womanhood.
Others allow their detestation of physical cowardice to blind them to the danger of allowing men to take the law into their own hands.

The individualism of the imperfectly socialized Southerner does not yet permit him to think of the law as a majestic, impersonal force towering high above the individual.

It is true that the Southerner is law-abiding on the whole, but he usually obeys the laws because they represent his ethical concepts and not because of devotion to the abstract idea of law.
There is danger, however, in the attempt to state dogmatically what the Southerner thinks or believes.

There is much diversity of opinion among the younger Southerners, for many questions are in a state of flux, and there is as yet no point of crystallization.