THE AMERICAN PRISONER AT THE BAR.* WE took occasions in

these columns not long ago to comment upon certain American characteristics, personal and national, which hinder the speedy and effective adminis- tration of criminal justice in the United States. Knowing full well the sensitiveness of our Transatlantic cousins to criticism from the stranger, whether within or without their gate, we have turned with some eagerness to these pages to see whether we have gone beyond what an experienced American lawyer deems himself constrained to say to his countrymen on this topic. The practice of his profession has brought Mr. Train into contact with every class of humanity that frequents the Courts,—with prisoner and prosecutor, advocate and witness, juryman and Judge. There can be few phases of life, few tricks of the trade, which are unknown to him. Yet in the final chapter of this very interesting book lie expresses his reluctant con- viction that lack of respect for law is characteristic of the American people as a whole, and that there exists to-day in the United States a widespread contempt for the criminal law, which, "if it has not already stimulated a general increase of criminal activity, is likely to do so in the future."

The uncertainty and the delays of the law, the sentimental and careless verdicts of the juries, the powerlessness of the Bench, the multitude of technical avenues of escape furnished to wrongdoers, the inordinate facilities for appeal, the inter- minable right of objecting to the talemen as they "come to the book to be sworn," have brought about a state of things productive of alarm and despondency to all who are not irrevocably wedded to an institution simply because it is American. The urgent problem, we are told, is no longer the protection of the innocent, but the punishment of the guilty. Penal statutes and procedure are declared to tend more and more to defeat and retard the ends of justice than to protect the rights of the accused. And Mr. Train attributes the "present overgrown state of the criminal law" to the

"exaggerated regard for personal liberty" prevalent in the United States, "coupled with H. wholesale adoption of the

technicalities of English law, invented when only such technicalities could stand between the minor offender and the barbarous punishments of a bygone age"

"The fundamental reason," he ventures to say, "for the arbitrary character of the verdicts of our juries lies not in our lack of intelligence as a nation, but in our small regard for human life, our low standard of commercial honesty, our hypocrisy in legislation, and the general mis- apprehension that the function of the jury is to render substantial justice '—a misapprehension fostered . by public sentiment, the press, and even in some cases by the bench itself, to the complete abandonment of the literal interpretation of the juror's oath of office."

But it would be a grave mistake to suppose that the object of this book is merely an indictment of the system under which the American citizen manages to live and thrive with remark- able success. The author seeks, in his own words, "to correct the very general erroneous impression as to certain phases of criminal justice, and to give a concrete idea of its actual

administration in large cities in ordinary cases."

Judging by the list of statutory misdemeanours, a selection

from which is given merely at random, the citizen of New York would need to walk very circumspectly. It is apparently a crime in that State to run a horse-race within a mile of where a Court is sitting ; to advertise as a divorce lawyer ; to go fishing on the first day of the week ; to let off fireworks, or make a "disturbing noise" at a military funeral in a city on • The Prisoner at the Bar: Sidelights on the Administration of Criminal Justice. By Arthur Train, Assistant District Attorney, New York County. London : T. Werner Laurie. [8s. 6d. J

Sunday ; to arrest or attach a corpse for payment of debt ; to shoe horses without complying with certain articles of the Labour Law; to steal a ride on a freight-car ; to wear a railroad uniform without authority ; to "secretly loiter" about a build- ing with intent to overhear discourse therein and to repeat the same to vex others; or to assemble with two or more other persons "disguised by having their faces painted, discoloured, coloured or concealed," save at a fancy-dress ball for which permission has been duly obtained from the police. Mr. Train finds grave fault with the Legislature that multiplies statutes making anything and everything crimes punishable with im- prisonment, and at the same time fails to bring the existing penal code abreast of the ingenuity of modern swindlers :— "The evolution of the modern corporation has made • possible larcenies to the punishment of which the law is entirely inadequate.

The careless nurse is a criminal and may be confined in a penitentiary ; while perhaps the man who may be guilty of a great iniquity and known to be so drives nonchalantly off in his coach and four."

But we have wandered from the daily administration of justice. The New York Police Court is very much like our own Metropolitan Courts, only centralised and on a hugely larger scale. There, as with us, it is the poor man's Court

of Appeal, in which the Magistrate, or "Police Judge," handles daily an enormous stream of miscellaneous business with efficiency and despatch. Long experience has given him an insight into the various types of offence and of character that present themselves before him. He has a direct personal knowledge of the people with whom lie is called upon to deal. He has first-hand information of local conditions and the personnel of the police

attached to the neighbouring precincts. "He knows a crooked officer, a crooked lawyer, and a crooked complainant when he sees one. Whatever the verbal testimony happens to be, lie may very well know different.'" While the constitution and laws of most of the States of the Union provide that no person shall be tried for a felony unless he shall have been first indicted by a grand jury, it is otherwise in the county of New York with misdemeanours. In that State there has been created by statute a Court consisting of three Judges, who sit together without a jury, and devote their whole time to trying misdemeanours. Mr. Train regards it as one of the most efficient Criminal Courts in the whole civilised world. "The Judges in this huge mill of justice rarely make mistakes, and 'few appeals are ever taken from their decisions. They have become by virtue of long experi- ence experts in fact, and the training thus received has qualified several of them for higher office." When it is taken into consideration that during the year 1905 this Court dis- posed of ten thousand and eighty-one misdemeanours, it is obvious that proceedings must go with the rapidity of "greased lightning." There is no time lost over selecting a jury; there is no opening address, no closing harangue, either by District Attorney or by counsel for the defendant. The

written statement sworn to by the complainant is sufficient material for the Court, cross-examination is cut down to its

essentials, and judgment is invariably given on the spot.

In nine cases out of ten the evidence is conclusive, and the merest glance at the complainant and his or her witnesses is enough to satisfy the onlooker that their claim is honest and the charge substantial. Take a case where two witnesses who have no previous acquaintance with the prisoner, whose eye- sight is perfect, and who have no motive to swear falsely identify him as caught flagrante delicto. Three minutes will suffice to give a perfectly fair, if not a very full, trial. The prisoner is charged with theft from a German grocer, who is duly sworn and asked to tell his story :—

I see dat defender (defendant) mit a leetle vagon On two wheels, py mein store mit anoder feller, unt dey catch up emn crate of eggs unt put him in de vagon unt skip mit him, unt I hollers " Tief ! " unt runs, unt de officer—' That's enough. Any cross-examination ? No? Call the officer.' The officer is sworn. 'Are you a member of the Municipal Police force of the city and county of New York, attached to the — Precinct, and were you so attached on the 17th of April last, and did you see the defendant on that day near the premises 666i Catharine Street?' ' Shure I seen him. Him and another feller. They were making off wid old " Delicatessen's " eggs. I c,atched this young feller—' That's enough. Any cross-examination ? No? Leave the stand." The People rest' [the American variant for That is the case for the prosecution'], announces the assistant district attorney."

In old days before the Summary Jurisdiction Acts, when

nearly every offence went to a jury, the proceedings at our own Central Criminal Court were taken at very much the same pace, and it is not so very long ago that a Chairman of

Staffordshire Quarter Sessions, now deceased, used to clear his list in a somewhat similar fashion.

Mr. Train introduces us to a veritable "Human Comedy" among the good citizens of New York, and the fifty pages in which he relates the tribulations of Mr. Silas Appleboy over the prosecution of his cook for stealing his silver teapot are worthy of Mark Twain or Max Adder. Readers of The Wrecker may

remember the wretched "shyster," and may have wondered what was his precise place in the scheme of American society.

We see him in those pages at work as a Police Court attorney of the lowest class, preying upon ignorance and vice, bleeding his victims to the last dollar, and far more deserving of punishment than the poor wretches he professes to defend. The junior member of the firm of Quirk, Gammon, and Snap would have disdained the acquaintance of a New York or San Francisco shyster.

The " ringer " is also an institution which we honestly believe to be unknown in this country. There is something like it in China, where, for money, substitutes can be procured to undergo torture and death. But whereas in the Middle Kingdom it is done openly, in America the practice is not sanctioned by the law. Mr. Train narrates how a certain Mr. Johnny Dough, who was particularly valuable to a great firm of swindlers, had the misfortune to be sentenced to the penitentiary for a year. Three months later "a working man went down to the Island to see his old friend 'Johnny Dough.' There was only one Johnny Dough' on the lists, but when ho was produced the visitor exclaimed : 'That Johnny Dough ! That ain't him at all, at all.' The visitor departed in disgust. We instituted an investigation and found that the man at the Island was a ringer.' But that is not the best part of it. You see, the 'ringer' says he was to get two hundred dollars per month for each month of Dough's sentence which he served. The prison authorities have refused to keep him any longer, and now he is suing them for damages, and is trying to get a writ of mandamus to compel them to take him back and let him serve out the rest of the sentence."

The author draws an interesting comparison between the working of the jury system in criminal cases in America and in England, much to the advantage of the latter, and he traces the unsatisfactory nature of so many of the verdicts of his countrymen to a strongly developed national trait :—

"There can be no question as to the capability of the ordinary juryman to perform his duties. The independent American is singularly adapted to just this form of investigation. If the English be 'a nation of shopkeepers,' we are a nation of natural cross-examiners. You will find as good verbal fencing in a New England corner grocery store about mail time as you will in most courts of justice. But the very innate capacity of the native American to perceive the truth and get to the bottom of things leads him to believe that he knows equally well, if not better than the judge what ought to be done about it, and what punish-. moot, if any, should be inflicted upon the defendant under the circumstances. It is not that our jurors are incapable or un- interested, but, paradoxical as it may seem, that they are too capable and too interested. They want to be not only jurors, but district attorney, counsel for the defendant, expert witness and judge into the bargain."

The English shopkeeper makes a less intelligent but a far more satisfactory juror, and Mr. Train finds the clue in that respect for the law, as such, which is deeply implanted in the bosom of every potential English juryman, as well as in that "inherited reverence for the judiciary which its uniformly high character has done much to foster." The ermine and trappings of a "red Judge" play a much greater part in the satisfactory administration of our criminal law than iconoclasts will allow, and there is profound truth in what Lord Campbell wrote in his Life of Clarendon, that "the aggregate of evil inflicted on the community by a bad judicial appointment is so enormous that it would be less mischievous to the public if a Chancellor were to accept a bribe for pronouncing an unjust decree, than if, yielding to personal favour or party bias, he should make an incompetent Judge."

We hope that Mr. Train's book will meet the reception in this country which it deserves. In spite of all the differences in spirit and practice between our own system of law and that in the United States, the points of resemblance are infinitely

more numerous. The same analogies, the same illustrations, the same time-honoured anecdotes, are common to English and American legal writers. The "Golden Rules for the examination of witnesses," quoted in the later editions of Best on Evidence, were written by an American lawyer, Mr. David Paul Brown, fifty years ago. We can most fitly repay the veneration and affection which American lawyers show for the venerable fabric that is common to us both by entering sympathetically and intelligently into the point of view from which they adapt old saws to modern instances.