: The Prisoner at the Bar: Sidelights on the Administration of Criminal Justice by Train Arthur Cheney - Crime United States; Criminal justice Administration of United States

@FreeBooks

Posted in: #FreeBooks #FreeBooksIndia #FreeBooksApp #gg

Vote Up Vote Down   0 Reactions

Login to give Reaction!

It is the duty of a prosecutor to see that infractions of the criminal law are punished and to represent the public in all proceedings had for that purpose, but, in view of what has just been said, it will be observed that his duties do not necessarily involve familiarity with vice, violence or even sin. The crimes he is called upon to prosecute may be disgusting, depraved and wicked, or they may be, and frequently are, interesting, ingenious, amusing or, possibly , commendable. For example, a man who chastises the foul slanderer of a young woman's character may have technically committed an assault of high degree, yet if he does so in the proper spirit, in a suitable place, and makes the offender smart sufficiently, he deserves the thanks and congratulations of all decent men and honest women. Yet, indubitably, he has committed a crime, although, thanks to our still lingering spirit of chivalry, he would never be stamped by any jury as a criminal.

A prosecutor is frequently asked if he does not find that his experience has a "hardening" effect.

"Why should it?" he might fairly reply. "I have to do with criminals, it is true, but the criminals as a rule are little or no worse than the classes of people outside from which they have been drawn. Their arrest and conviction are largely due to accidental causes, such as weak heads, warm hearts, quick temper, ignorance, foolishness or drunkenness. We see all of these characteristics in our immediate associates. A great many convicted persons have done acts which are not wrong at all, but are merely forbidden. Even where their acts are really wrong it is generally the stupid, the unfortunate, or the less skilful who are caught. For every rogue in jail there are at least ten thousand at large. The ones who escape are wiser and very likely meaner. Last, but not least, a very great number of the most despicable, wicked, and harmful deeds that can be committed are not crimes at all. The fact that a man is a criminal argues nothing at all against his general decency, and when I meet a convict I assume, and generally assume correctly, that to most intents and purposes he is a gentleman. The code which puts one man in stripes and allows another to ride in an automobile is purely artificial, and strictly speaking proves not a whit which is the better man."

Crimes bear no absolute relation to one another. A murderer may or may not be worse than a thief,--and either may be better than his accuser. The actual danger of any particular offender to the community lies not so much in the kind or degree of crime which he may have committed as in the state of his mind. Even the criminals who are really criminal, in the sense that they have a systematic intention of defying the law and preying upon society, are generally not criminal in all directions, but usually only in one, so that taken upon their unprofessional side they present the same characteristics as ordinary and, roughly speaking, law-abiding citizens. The bank robber usually is a bank robber and nothing more. He specializes in that one pursuit. It is his vocation and his joy. He prides himself on the artistic manner in which he does his work. He would scorn to steal your watch and is a man of honor outside of bank-breaking hours,--"Honor among thieves." Often enough he is a model husband and father. So, too, may be your forger, gambler, swindler, burglar, highwayman, or thief,--any in fact except the real moral pervert; and of course murder is entirely compatible on occasion with a noble, dignified and generous character. "There is nothing essentially incongruous between crime and culture." The prosecutor who begins by loathing and despising the man sitting at the bar may end by having a sincere admiration for his intellect, character or capabilities. This by way of defence to crime in general.

Even when the acts to be contrasted are all crimes there is no way of actually discriminating between them except by carefully scrutinizing the circumstances of each. The so-called "degrees" mean little or nothing. If you steal four hundred and ninety-nine dollars out of a man's safe in the daytime it is grand larceny in the second degree. If you pick the same man's pocket of a subway ticket after sunset it is grand larceny in the first degree. You may get five years in the first instance and ten in the second. If you steal twenty-five dollars out of a bureau drawer you commit petty larceny and may be sent to prison for only one year.

If the degree of any particular crime of which a defendant is found guilty is no index to his real criminality or of his danger to society, still less is the name of the crime he has committed an index to his moral character, save in the case of certain offences which it is not necessary to enumerate. Most men charged with homicide are indicted for murder in the first degree. This may be a wise course for the grand jury to pursue in view of the additional evidence which often comes to light during a trial. But it frequently is discovered before the case goes to the jury that in point of fact the killing was in hot blood and under circumstances which evince no great moral turpitude in the slayer. For example, two drunken men become involved in an altercation and one strikes the other, who loses his equilibrium and falls, hitting his head against a curbstone and fracturing his skull. The striker is indicted and tried for murder. Now he is doubtless guilty of manslaughter, but he is less dangerous to the community than a professional thief who preys upon the public by impersonating a gasman or telephone repairer and by thus gaining access to private dwellings steals the owner's property. One is an accidental, the other an intentional criminal. One is hostile to society as a whole and the other is probably not really hostile to anybody. Yet the less guilty is denominated a murderer, and the other is rarely held guilty of more than petty larceny. A fellow who bumps into you on the street, if he be accompanied by another, and grabs your cane, is guilty of robbery in the first degree,--"highway" robbery,--and may get twenty years for it, but the same man may publish a malicious libel about you, and by accusing you of the foulest practices rob you of your good name and be only guilty of a misdemeanor. Yet the reader should not infer that definitions and grades of crime capable of corresponding punishments are not proper, desirable, and necessary. Of course they are. The practical use of such statutes is to fix a maximum sentence of punishment. As a rule the minimum is anything the judge sees fit. Hence you may deduce a general principle to the effect that the charge against the prisoner, even assuming his guilt, indicates nothing definite as to his moral turpitude, danger to the community, or general undesirability.

But we may honestly go much further. Not only are the names and degrees of the crimes which a defendant may have committed of very little assistance in determining his real criminality, but the fact that he has committed them by no means signifies that he is morally any worse than some man who has committed no so-called crime at all. Many criminals, even those guilty of homicide, are as white as snow compared with others who have never transgressed the literal wording of a penal statute.

In a second case, that of Livingston, the complainant had been defrauded out of five hundred dollars by means of the "green-goods" game; but this conviction was reversed by the Appellate Division of the Second Department on the authority of the McCord case. The opinion was written by Mr. Justice Cullen, now Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals, who says in conclusion:

Well might the judges regret being compelled to set a rogue at liberty simply because he had been ingenious enough to invent a fraud which involved the additional turpitude of seducing another into a criminal conspiracy. Livingston was turned loose upon the community, in spite of the fact that he had swindled a man out of five hundred dollars, because he had incidentally led the latter to believe that in return he was to receive counterfeit money or "green goods" which might be put into circulation. Yet, because, some years before, the judges of the Court of Appeals had, in the McCord matter, adopted the rule followed in civil cases, to wit, that as the complaining witness was himself in fault and did not come into court with clean hands he could have no standing before them, the Appellate Division in the next case felt obliged to follow them and to rule tantamount to saying that two wrongs could make a right and two knaves one honest man. It may seem a trifle unfair to put it in just this way, but when one realizes the iniquity of such a rule as applied to criminal cases, it is hard to speak softly. Thus the broad and general doctrine seemed to be established that so long as a thief could induce his victim to believe that it was to his advantage to enter into a dishonest transaction, he might defraud him to any extent in his power. Immediately there sprang into being hordes of swindlers, who, aided by adroit shyster lawyers, invented all sorts of schemes which involved some sort of dishonesty upon the part of the person to be defrauded. The "wire-tappers," of whom "Larry" Summerfield was the Napoleon, the "gold-brick" and "green-goods" men, and the "sick engineers" flocked to New York, which, under the unwitting protection of the Court of Appeals, became a veritable Mecca for persons of their ilk.

The "wire-tapping" game consisted in inducing the victim to put up money for the purpose of betting upon a "sure thing," knowledge of which the thief pretended to have secured by "tapping" a Western Union wire of advance news of the races. He usually had a "lay out" which included telegraph instruments connected with a dry battery in an adjoining closet, and would merrily steal the supposed news off an imaginary wire and then send his dupe to play his money upon the "winner" in a pretended pool-room which in reality was nothing but a den of thieves, who instantly absconded with the money.

In this way one John Felix was defrauded out of fifty thousand dollars on a single occasion. Now the simplest legislation could instantly remedy this evil and put all the "wire-tappers" and similar swindlers out of business, yet a bill framed and introduced in accordance with the suggestion of the highest court in the State was defeated. Instead the legislature passes scores of entirely innocuous and respectable acts like the following, which became a law in 1890:

An Act for the Prevention of Blindness

Free books android app tbrJar TBR JAR Read Free books online gutenberg

(0)

Login to post a comment!