Another interesting criminal lawyer is Robert I. Miller, who shot and killed a St. Elizabeth’s Hospital psychiatrist whom he suspected of playing with Mrs. Miller. The shooting took place at about noon one day, in the heart of the shopping section at 11th and G Streets. He was represented by H. Mason Welch, who sob-storied the jury into an acquittal on the “unwritten law.”
Miller is not the smartest lawyer in town, but he does a tremendous business defending Negroes and other superstitious criminals who engage him sometimes just to sit at the trial table for good luck, because he beat his own case. Miller, an ostentatious person, often wipes his glasses with a $100 bill while addressing a jury. He claimed close friendship to Roosevelt and Garner and decorates his office with photos of them. He ran a Republicans-for-Roosevelt club.
Some lawyers win their cases through merit, others through a fix. Still others, who weren’t envied by their colleagues, had to do it the hard way when a certain former bachelor-lady judge, who shall be nameless, rendered her verdicts in favor of clients of the mouthpieces whose persuasion grew between covers not on law books. She was an awful tomato, and many attorneys preferred to lose their cases.
Judge Hitz, the humorist of the local bench, got off a dilly when he discovered the plaintiff in a matrimonial action was still living with her husband, the whole divorce proceedings being a sham to swindle creditors. Said the judge, in dismissing the action, “You can’t litigate by day and fornicate by night.”
31. THE BOSSES
The last orthodox political boss of Washington was Alexander Robey Shepherd. When he finished with the city treasury, Congress voted to end home rule and took back the government.
From the time of its incorporation as a city, in 1802, Washington was run by elected mayors and aldermen. In 1871, in President Grant’s administration, it was turned into a territory, similar to Alaska or Hawaii, with delegates in Congress and a large measure of home rule. Shepherd was a pal of General Grant, who had numerous smelly friends.
Shepherd’s stewardship was modern in every respect. He went in for a New Deal on a big scale. The town was torn up while Shepherd paved streets, installed sewers—sometimes two sets to one avenue—went in for slum clearance, built squares, parks, circles, gas-mains and sidewalks. Shepherd began life as a plumber, and showed partiality for anything with pipes.
Shepherd had built up a small Tammany to keep his boys in power. Votes were bartered, crimes were fixed, laws were perverted. When the end came, Shepherd skipped and hid out until the statute of limitations ran out. When he returned they greeted him with a brass band, like New York did Jimmy Walker, and built him a statue.