The Prisoner at the Bar: Sidelights on the Administration of Criminal Justice

by Arthur Cheney Train

Many changes are rung upon this device. There is said to have been a case in which the defendant was convicted of murder in the first degree and sentenced to be executed. It was one of circumstantial evidence and the verdict was the result of hours of deliberation on the part of the jury. The prisoner had stoutly denied knowing anything of the homicide. Shortly before the date set for the execution, another man turned up who admitted that he had committed the crime and made the fullest sort of a confession. A new trial was thereupon granted by the Appellate Court, and the convict, on the application of the prosecuting attorney, was discharged and quickly made himself scarce. It then developed that apart from the prisoner's own confession there was practically nothing to connect him with the crime. Under a statute making such evidence obligatory in order to render a confession sufficient for a conviction, the prisoner had to be discharged.

In the case of Mabel Parker, a young woman of twenty, charged with the forgery of a large number of checks, many of them for substantial amounts, her husband made an almost successful attempt to procure her acquittal by means of a new variation of the old game. Mrs. Parker, after her husband had been arrested for passing one of the bogus checks, had been duped by a detective into believing that the latter was a fellow criminal who was interested in securing Parker's release. In due course she took this supposed friend into her confidence, made a complete confession, and illustrated her skill by impromptu copies of her forgeries from memory upon a sheet of pad paper. This the detective secured and then arrested her. She was indicted for forging the name Alice Kauser to a check upon the Lincoln National Bank. On her trial she denied having done so, and claimed that the detective had found the sheet containing her supposed handwriting in her husband's desk, and that she had written none of the alleged copies upon it. The door of the court-room then opened, and James Parker was led to the bar and pleaded guilty to the forgery of the check in question. (For the benefit of the layman it should be explained that as a rule indictments for forgery also contain a count for "uttering.") He then took the stand, admitted that he had not only uttered but had also written the check, and swore that it was his handwriting which appeared on the pad.

The prosecutor was nonplussed. If he should ask the witness to prove his capacity to forge such a check from memory on the witness-stand, the latter, as he had had ample time to practise the signature while in prison, would probably succeed in doing so. If, on the other hand, he should not ask him to write the name, the defendant's counsel would argue to the jury that he was afraid to do so. The district attorney therefore took the bull by the horns and challenged Parker to make from memory a copy of the signature, and, much as he had suspected, the witness produced a very good one. An acquittal seemed certain, and the prosecutor was at his wit's end to devise a means to meet this practical demonstration that the husband was in fact the forger. At last it was suggested to him that it would be comparatively easy to memorize such a signature, and acting on this hint he found that after half an hour's practice he was able to make almost as good a forgery as Parker. When therefore it came time for him to address the jury he pointed out the fact that Parker's performance on the witness-stand really established nothing at all—that any one could forge such a signature from memory after but a few minutes' practice.

"To prove to you how easily this can be done," said he, "I will volunteer to write a better Kauser signature than Parker did."

He thereupon seized a pen and began to demonstrate his ability to do so. Mrs. Parker, seeing the force of this ocular demonstration, grasped her counsel's arm and cried out: "For God's sake, don't let him do it!" The lawyer objected, the objection was sustained, but the case was saved. Why, the jury argued, should the lawyer object unless the making of such a forgery were in fact an easy matter?

In desperate cases, desperate men will take desperate chances. The traditional instance where the lawyer, defending a client charged with causing the death of another by administering poisoned cake, met the evidence of the prosecution's experts with the remark: "This is my answer to their testimony!" and calmly ate the balance of the cake, is too familiar to warrant detailed repetition. The jury retired to the jury-room and the lawyer to his office, where a stomach pump quickly put him out of danger. The jury is supposed to have acquitted.

Such are some of the tricks of the legal trade as practised in its criminal branch. Most of them are unsuccessful and serve only to relieve the gray monotony of the courts. When they achieve their object they add to the interest of the profession and teach the prosecutor a lesson by which, perhaps, he may profit in the future.

FOOTNOTES:

[45] The defence that the accused innocently received the stolen property into his possession was a familiar one even in 1697, as appears by the following record taken from the Minutes of the Sessions. It would seem that it was even then received with some incredulity.

CITY & COUNTY OF NEW YORK: ss: