The ordinary citizen quite naturally gains his impressions of the administration of criminal justice by reading accounts of sensational trials. He imagines that the daily life of the prosecutor consists in demanding the conviction of hardened felons with sordid, crime-tracked features, varied by occasional spectacular "star cases" where counsel for the defendant and the prosecutor vie with one another in stupendous outbursts of oratory in which the bird of liberty screams unrestrained and Justice frantically waves her scales. He supposes, if he gives the matter any consideration at all, that defendants languish away their lives in the Tombs waiting for trials which never come, and that influential criminals walk the streets while the indictments against them lie accumulating an overcoat of dust in some forgotten pigeon-hole. He frankly assumes that the jury system is pretty nearly a failure, and knows of his own knowledge, or thinks he does, that any one with enough money can either avoid being tried for crime at all or, if by any mischance he be convicted, can easily escape punishment or at least delay it indefinitely by technicalities of procedure and appeals. In his customary dialect he "has no use" for the criminal or the criminal courts, and his only dread is that he may some time be drawn as a juror and be compelled to serve in a region of the city where he will be unable to find a satisfactory place to get his lunch and in the society of those whose companionship he fancies he is not likely to enjoy.
Let us assume that Mr. Ordinary Citizen has been so unfortunate as to receive one of those pink slips which call upon him to "all business or other matters lay aside" and to attend at Part I of the General Sessions of the Peace at ten o'clock on the first Monday of the month. He finds himself in a large and well-lighted court-room, at one end of which, on a dais, sits a judge more or less surrounded by various persons who continually approach and engage him in conversation. At a desk in front, a clerk and his assistant are busy with piles of documents, which "O.C." learns later to be indictments, and with big ledgers which are in fact the "Minutes of the Sessions." The room is crowded, all the benches being filled with a varied, but, on the whole, a respectable-appearing assortment of humanity. In front of the judge and clerk, wandering around inside an enclosure, at one side of which stands the temporarily empty jury-box, are several young men who are earnestly engaged in talking to the lawyers, complainants and policemen who throng at the bar.
Suddenly the clerk raises his voice and shouts, "Harken to the call of the calendar!" An officer pounds on a railing with a paper-weight, another bellows, "Find seats there! An' quit talkin'!" and the judge, gazing at a long sheet of foolscap in his hand, remarks inquiringly:
"People against Murphy?"
The young assistant district attorney at once answers:
"People are ready."
"If your Honor please," nervously exclaims a stout man pushing his way to the front, "this case has never been on the calendar before. I was only retained last night and I did not receive any notice that it was to be tried until this morning. I ask that it go over until next week."
"What do you say, Mr. District Attorney?" asks the judge.
"Oh, it's a very simple case," answers the assistant. "There's no reason why it should not be tried to-day."