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Search - The Prisoner At The Bar - Sidelights On The Administration Of Criminal Justice

The Prisoner At The Bar Sidelights On The Administration Of Criminal Justice
Author: Arthur Cheney Train

PREFACE. THE prisoner at the bar is a figure little known to most of us. The newspapers keep us steadily informed as to the doings of all sorts of criminals up to the time of their capture, and prison literature is abundant, but just how tlie crirninal becomes a convict is not a matter of common knowledge. This, however, does not prevent the ord... more »inary citizen from expressing pronounced and, frequently, vociferous opinions upon our methods of administering criminal justice, in the same way that he stands ready at any time to criticise the Darwinian theory, free trade or foreign missions. Full knowledge of any subject is inevitably an impediment to forcible asseveration. Generalities are easy to formulate and difficult to disprove. The man who sits with his feet up and his chair tilted back in the drummer S hotel will in orm you that there is no such thing as criminal justice and that the whole judiciary, state and federal, is owned or can be bought you yourself doubtless believe that the jury system is a failure and successfully evade service upon it while your neighbor is firmIy con vinced that prosecutors secure their positions by reason of their similarity to bloodhounds and re tain them by virtue of the same token. The only information available to most people on this exceedingly important subject is that offered by the press, and the press save in the case of sensational murder trials usually confines itself to dramatic accounts of the arrest of the more picturesque sort of criminals, with lurid descriptions of their offences. The report or story concludes with the statement that Detective-Sergeant Smith immediately arraigned his prisoner Robinson before Magistrate Jones, who committed the latter to jail and adjourned the hearing until the following Tuesday. This ends the matter, and the grewsome or ingenious details of the crime having been served up to satisfy the public appetite, and the offender having been locked up, there is nothing, from the reporters point of view, any longer in the story. We never hear of Robinson again unless he happens to be the president of a bank or a degenerate millionaire. He is disposed of, as they say in the criminal reports, without exciting anybodys interest, and his conviction or acquittal is not attended by newspaper comment. If on the other hand the case be one of sensational interest we are treated daily to long histories of the defendant and his family, illustrated by grotesque reproductions from the ancestral photograph album. We become familiar with what he eats and drinks, the number of cigars he smokes and his favorite actor and author. Tbe case consumes months in preparation and its trial occupies weeks. A battalion of special talesmen marches to the court house,- the standing army of the gibbet, as one of my professional brethren on the other side of the bar calls them. As each of the twelve is chosen his physiognomy appears on the front page of an evening edition, a tear dropping from his eye or his jaws locked in grim determination, in accordance with the sentiments of the editor or the policy of the owner. Then follows a pictorial procession of witnesses. The prosecutor makes a full-page address to the public in the centre of which appears his portrait, heroic size, arm sawing the air. I am innocent cries a purple defendant, in green letters. Murderer hisses a magenta prosecutor, in d. characters of vermilion. Finally the whole performance comes to an end without anybody having much of an idea of what has actually taken place, and leaving on the public mind an entirely false and distorted conception of what a criminal trial is like...

ISBN-13: 9781408639795
ISBN-10: 1408639793
Publication Date: 1/31/2008
Pages: 360
Rating:

0 stars, based on 0 rating

Publisher: Read Books
Book Type: Paperback
Other Versions: Hardcover
Members Wishing: 0
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

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Search - The Prisoner At The Bar - Sidelights On The Administration Of Criminal Justice

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