By Advice of Counsel

by Arthur Cheney Train

"My name is Tutt," said he. "I am counsel for a man named Hassoun, whom you are going to try for murder. You are, of course, perfectly familiar with the facts."

He fumbled in his waistcoat, produced two withered stogies and cast his eye along the wall.

"Would you—mind—if I sat down? And could I offer you a stogy?"

"Sit down—by all means," answered W.M.P. "No, thanks!"—to the stogy.

Mr. Tutt sat down, carefully placed his old chimney pot upside down on the window ledge, and stacked in it the bundle of papers he was carrying.

"I thought you might forgive me if I came to talk over the case a little with you. You see, there are so many things that a prosecutor has to consider—and which it is right that he should consider." He paused to light a match. "Now in this case, though in all probability my client is guilty there is practically no possibility of his being convicted of anything higher than manslaughter in the first degree. The defense will produce many witnesses—probably as many as the prosecution. Both sides will tell their stories in a language unintelligible to the jury, who must try to ascertain the true inwardness of the situation through an interpreter. They will realize that they are not getting the real truth—I mean the Syrian truth. As decent-minded men they won't dare to send a fellow to the chair whose defense they cannot hear and whose motives they do not either know or understand. They will feel, as I do and perhaps you do, that the only persons to do justice among Syrians are Syrians."

"Well," replied Mr. Pepperill politely, "what have you to propose?"

"That you recommend the acceptance of a plea of manslaughter in the second degree."

Deputy Assistant District Attorney William Montague Pepperill drew himself up haughtily. He regarded all criminal practitioners as semicrooks, ignorant, illiterate, rather dirty men—not in the real American class.

"I can do nothing of the kind," he answered sternly and very distinctly. "If these men seek the hospitality of our shores they must be prepared to be judged by our laws and by our standards of morality. I do not agree with you that our juridical processes are not adequate to that purpose. Moreover, I regard it as unethical—un-eth-i-cal—to accept a plea for a lesser degree of crime than that which the defendant has presumptively committed."