After a rather long experience as a prosecutor, in which he has conducted many hundreds of criminal cases, the writer believes that the ordinary New York City jury finds a correct general verdict four times out of five. As to talesmen in other localities he has no knowledge or reliable information. It seems hardly possible, however, that juries in other parts of the United States could be more heterogeneous or less intelligent than those before which he formed his conclusions. Of course, jury judgments are sometimes flagrantly wrong. But there are many verdicts popularly regarded as examples of lawlessness which, if examined calmly and solely from the point of view of the evidence, would be found to be the reasonable acts of honest and intelligent juries.
For example, the acquittal of Thaw upon the ground of insanity is usually spoken of as an illustration of sentimentality on the part of jurymen, and of their willingness to be swayed by their emotions where a woman is involved. But few clearer cases of insanity have been established in a court of justice. The district attorney’s own experts had pronounced the defendant a hopeless paranoiac; the prosecutor had, at a previous trial, openly declared the same to be his own opinion; and the evidence was convincing. At the time it was rendered, the verdict was accepted as a foregone conclusion. To-day the case is commonly cited as proof of the gullibility of juries and of the impossibility of convicting a rich man of a crime.
There will always be some persons who think that every defendant should be convicted and feel aggrieved if he is turned out by the jury. Yet they entirely forget, in their displeasure at the acquittal of a man whom they instinctively “know” to be guilty, that the jury probably had exactly the same impression, but were obliged under their oaths to acquit because of an insufficiency of evidence.
An excellent illustration of such a case is that of Nan Patterson. She is commonly supposed to have attended, upon the night of her acquittal, a banquet at which one of her lawyers toasted her as “the guilty girl who beat the case.” Whether she was guilty or not, there is a general and well-founded impression that she murdered Cæsar Young. Yet the writer, who was present throughout the trial, felt at the conclusion of the case that there was a fairly reasonable doubt of her guilt. Even so, the jury disagreed, although the case is usually referred to as an acquittal and a monument to the sentimentality of juries.
The acquittal of Roland B. Molineux is also recalled as a case where a man, previously proved guilty, managed to escape. The writer, who was then an assistant district attorney, made a careful study of the evidence at the time, and feels confident that the great majority of the legal profession would agree with him in the opinion that the Court of Appeals had no choice but to reverse the defendant’s first conviction on account of the most prejudicial error committed at the trial, and that the jury who acquitted him upon the second occasion had equally no choice when the case was presented with a proper regard to the rules of evidence and procedure. Indeed, on the second trial the evidence pointed almost as convincingly toward another person as toward the defendant.
I have mentioned the Patterson, Thaw, and Molineux trials because they are cases commonly referred to in support of the general contention that the jury system is a failure. But I am inclined to believe that any single judge, bench of judges, or board of commissioners would have reached the same result as the juries did in these instances.
It is quite true that juries, for rather obvious reasons, are more apt to acquit in murder cases than in others. In the first place, save where the defendant obviously belongs to the vicious criminal class, a jury finds it somewhat difficult to believe, unless overwhelming motive be shown, that he could have deliberately taken another’s life. Thus, with sound reason, they give great weight to the plea of self-defence which the accused urges upon them. He is generally the only witness. His story has to be disproved by circumstantial evidence, if indeed there be any. Frequently it stands alone as the only account of the homicide. Thus murder cases are almost always weaker than others, since the chief witness has been removed by death; while at the same time the nature of the punishment leads the jury unconsciously to require a higher degree of proof than in cases where the consequences are less abhorrent. All this is quite natural and inevitable. Moreover, homicide cases as a rule are better defended than others, a fact which undoubtedly affects the result. These considerations apply to all trials for homicide, notorious or otherwise, the results of which in New York County for the past ten years are set forth in the following table:
| YEAR | CONVICTIONS | ACQUITTALS | CONVICTION PER CENT | ACQUITTALS PER CENT |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1901 | 25 | 25 | 60 | 40 |
| 1902 | 31 | 11 | 74 | 26 |
| 1903 | 42 | 8 | 84 | 16 |
| 1904 | 37 | 14 | 72 | 28 |
| 1905 | 32 | 13 | 71 | 29 |
| 1906 | 53 | 22 | 70 | 30 |
| 1907 | 39 | 10 | 78 | 22 |
| 1908 | 35 | 17 | 67 | 33 |
| 1909 | 43 | 11 | 80 | 20 |
| 1910 | 45 | 15 | 75 | 25 |
| Total | 382 | 138 | Av. 73 | Av. 27 |
A popular impression exists at the present time that a man convicted of murder has but to appeal his case on some technical ground in order to secure a reversal, and thus escape the consequences of his crime. How wide of the mark such a belief may be, at least so far as one locality is concerned, is shown by the fact that in New York State, from 1887 to 1907, there were 169 decisions by the Court of Appeals on appeals from convictions of murder in the first-degree, out of which there were only twenty-nine reversals. Seven of these defendants were again immediately tried and convicted, and a second time appealed, upon which occasion only two were successful, while five had their convictions promptly affirmed. Thus, so far as the ultimate triumph of justice is concerned, out of 169 cases in that period the appellants finally succeeded in twenty-two only.
Since 1902 there have been twenty-seven decisions rendered in first-degree murder cases by the Court of Appeals, with only three reversals.[4] The more important convictions throughout the State are affirmed with great regularity.