The practices of the shysters are the curse of the lower courts, and their enormities are such that a special cycle in Hades should be reserved for their particular retribution. Preying upon ignorance and vice, they become hardened to every appeal of human sympathy and often deserve punishment a thousand times more heavy than the miserable wretches whom they make a pretence of defending. They pervert justice and prostitute a sacred calling, extorting from their clients the uttermost farthing by fear and false pretence. To show that this charge is not ill-founded, the reader may take as an example the practice of the shyster in dealing with those unfortunate women who are the common prey of the corrupt plain-clothes man and his conscienceless ally—the police-court lawyer.
Let us suppose that a certain section of the town is, as the saying goes, "wide open," and the police are regularly collecting protection money according to the approved method of "the system." The houses which pay up are left undisturbed—and all do pay up. So does the little street walker who plies her trade in the open. Some citizen or newspaper makes a complaint that the police are not doing their duty. There is a bare chance that political capital will be made of it and word is sent to the captain of the precinct to "get busy." He sends for the plain-clothes man, and tells him "there are not arrests enough." The officer answers that "everything is quiet." "Get busy," says the captain. A scapegoat is necessary and so the officer goes out and, leaving the bawdy-houses untroubled, tracks some miserable creature to her lonely room and there arrests her under the pretence that she is violating the "Tenement House Law." Now the worst that would happen to such an unfortunate would be, having "waived examination" before the magistrate, and pleaded guilty in Special Sessions, to be fined twenty-five or fifty dollars. The girl usually does not know this. When she is brought in under arrest the keeper "tips off" the runner for some lawyer, who first frightens her into believing that a long term of imprisonment confronts her, and then introduces his master. The latter in turn offers to get her out on bail, meantime determining by an expert cross-examination, at which he is a past master, exactly how much money she has in the world. He then proceeds to acquire this by every means at his command. An actual case will illustrate what follows.
A young girl who had fallen from virtue, but who had never been arrested before, was brought into the Jefferson Market prison. She had saved five hundred dollars with which she intended the following week to return to her native town in New Hampshire and start life anew. The keeper led her to believe that she would be imprisoned in the penitentiary for nearly a year unless she could "beat the case." One of these buzzards learned of her distress and offered to procure bail for her for the sum of fifty dollars. A straw bondsman was produced, and she paid him the money and was liberated. Meanwhile the lawyer had learned of the existence of her five hundred dollars. By terrifying her with all sorts of stories as to what would possibly happen to her, he succeeded in inducing her to pay him three hundred as a retainer to appear for her at the hearing in the magistrate's court. He had guaranteed to get her off then and there, but when her case was called he happened to be engaged in reading a newspaper and, looking up from where he was sitting, merely remarked, "Waives examination, your honor." The girl had only one hundred and fifty dollars left, and as yet had had no defence, but the shyster now demanded and received one hundred dollars more for representing her in the Special Sessions. She now had but fifty dollars. Immediately after the hearing in the police court the bondsman "surrendered" her and she was locked up in the Tombs pending her trial, for she had not money enough to secure another bail bond. Here she languished three or four days. When at last her case appeared upon the calendar the shyster did not even take the trouble to come to court himself, but telephoned to another buzzard that she still had fifty dollars, telling him to "take her on." Abandoned by her counsel, alone and in prison, she gave up the last cent she had, hoping thus still to escape the dreadful fate predicted for her. When she was called to the bar the second lawyer informed her she had no defence and the best thing she could do was to plead guilty. This she did and was fined twenty-five dollars, but, having now no money, was compelled to serve out her time, a day for each dollar, in the City Prison, at the end of which time she was cast penniless upon the streets.
Many an originally honest young fellow who, in a sincere attempt to build up a small practice, has haunted the magistrate's court and secured petty police business has been gradually drawn into the vortex of crime until he is even more tainted than those whom he defends. The Legal Aid Society, which, so far as the writer is aware, is the only bona fide charitable organization existing in New York for the purpose of assisting impoverished persons to secure legal counsel, does not undertake any criminal business. No greater service could be rendered to the community than by some society organized to protect helpless defendants who have fallen victims to the vultures who prey upon the prison pens. At the present time the official prosecutor himself is the only person to whom one charged with a criminal offence can turn with any hope of relief from his own lawyer, and if the number of cases were known where the prosecutor has befriended the prosecuted the eyes of jurors and of the public would be opened to the real spirit which animates a fair-minded district attorney.
A favorite trick of shysters if they have an imprisoned client who still refuses to "give up," is to plead "not guilty and not ready" and thus have the case adjourned until they squeeze their victim dry. A defendant who has any money is never permitted to go to trial or even to plead guilty before his money is entirely exhausted.
This is not romance, it is practice. The men who do these things can be seen any day in every police court in New York—heartless, cynical, merciless. Lying and deceit are their stock in trade, corruption their daily food. Within three months one of these gentry not only compelled an eighteen-year-old girl to give him a fine Etruscan ring which she had inherited, and which he pawned for five dollars, but stripped her of a new silk petticoat which he carried away in a newspaper as a fee. This woman served ten days because she could not pay her fine. Another woman who had stolen an umbrella gave a shyster her watch. He pawned it and then abandoned her, when she came up for trial. Each of these men has a special line of clients which he serves, either because he is supposed to be particularly expert in such cases or because he is regularly retained by the "trust" which they compose. Thus the East Side pickpockets have one attorney, the "green-goods" men another, the opium sellers a third, the abortionists a fourth, while every "short changing," "thimble rigging," or "flim-flam" case sees the same lawyer for the defence.
It is a fact of considerable significance that most retailers charged with selling adulterated milk are defended by the same lawyers. The large milk companies apparently invite the trade of the small dealer by offering him cheap milk, and a guarantee that if he is caught selling their product they will not only defend him but, if he be found guilty, will pay his fine. Who does the adulterating? The company or the retailer? It is almost impossible to say. Nevertheless, if lack of evidence prevents proceedings against the companies themselves, the next best thing is to punish the dealers who act as their agents, under the guise of doing an independent business. If prison sentences were invariably inflicted in such cases the dealers would soon find their miserable business as unhealthy as do the consumers who buy from them.
Some very disreputable, but, nevertheless, highly amusing tricks are invoked by wily practitioners in the Special Sessions to secure the release of their clients. One of the most adroit is to secure adjournments from day to day on various pretexts until the patience of the complaining witness is nearly exhausted. When the case is at last about to be called for trial the lawyer tells his runner to go into the corridor outside the court-room and send in word that some one desires to see the complainant. The complainant goes out to see what is wanted. In the meantime the case is moved for trial, and when his name is called he naturally fails to respond. The shyster, in a most aggrieved tone, then informs the court that the defendant "is a hard-working man who has already been dragged down to court four or five times," on each occasion being compelled to lose an entire day's pay; that he is the only support of an invalid wife, an aged mother, six children, and an imbecile brother; that the defence is and always has been ready to proceed with the case; that simply in the interests of justice he requests that the defendant be discharged on his own recognizance or acquitted. In many cases this motion is granted and the complainant hurries back into the court-room just in time to meet the defendant making a triumphal exit.
The tears and laughter of the police courts are the tears and laughter of the Sessions. The Miserables of Hugo are the miserables of to-day. Jean Valjean, Fantine, and Cosette haunt the corridors of our courts. As well try to paint the sufferings and experiences of mankind in a single picture as the ten thousand yearly tragedies of the Special Sessions in a single chapter.