In his paper on “The Position a Physician Should Occupy in the Trial, Sentencing and Care of Criminals,” Dr. Theodore Cook, Jr., of Baltimore, made a strong plea for a larger recognition of the medical profession in all questions relating to the condition and treatment of the degenerate, sick and insane prisoner. His contention was that a great many criminals are sick either mentally or physically, and that when these appear for trial the State should see that their infirmities are recognized and treated scientifically. A recommendation made by him before the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland was to the effect that before a person is tried for a serious offense his mental and physical condition should be examined into by a committee consisting of the jail physician and prosecuting attorney of the county where the defendant is to be tried and an alienist; the alienist to be appointed by the Governor on recommendation of the State Medical Society at a stipulated salary, and required to organize this committee in each county at stated intervals. This committee would be required to pass on the fitness of the prisoner to stand trial and receive sentence and to see that any infirmities were properly attended to; the youthful degenerate being given special attention, the sick healed and the insane sent to a proper institution to remain there until discharged by this committee. This committee should have full power to summon witnesses to investigate the prisoner’s condition. Its findings should be filed with the other court records before trial. Under these circumstances the committee would determine the mental responsibility of the prisoner, and to this extent relieve judge, district attorney and jury of a burden.

Dr. Cook also strongly urged that the physician should be given more authority in the various institutions for the detention and correction of the criminal classes, and that for the sanitary and hygienic condition of such institutions he should be held strictly responsible.

EVENING SESSION

In his report of the Committee on Criminal Law Reform, Mr. Roger Phelps Clark, district attorney, Binghamton, N. Y., said in part:

“As the law is to-day no power can force a witness to go from the State of Pennsylvania into the adjoining State of New York to testify there either before a magistrate or a grand or petit jury in a criminal case other than federal. Consequently it is often the case that criminals escape punishment and sometimes even prosecution. The punishment of criminals should not be a local issue.

“Unfortunately the criminal laws are drafted by criminal lawyers, who, as legislators, are seeking to protect a line of clientage, present and prospective, rather than their constituents.

“Corporate interests that now possess as many avenues of escape from regulation that can be made effective only by criminal prosecution, as there are different State governments, are unwilling to have these regulations made and enforced by the undivided power and responsibility of one sovereign law. To them each State government is as a city of refuge. One of the great questions to-day is whether government shall control the corporations or the corporations the government.

“It is a deplorable fact that generally throughout this country the judges presiding in the trials of criminal cases in courts of record are not sufficiently versed in criminal law. This branch of law is as thoroughly distinct from civil law as admiralty law is from ecclesiastical law.

“Judge Taft, in his address on the administration of criminal law, in June, 1905, before the Yale Law School, called attention to the small proportion of murderers that were punished. Possibly this is due in a degree to the lack of courage on the part of jurors. It seems as though better results are secured in States that have abolished the death penalty.

“Insanity to-day is usually the moneyed defense. The fact that a rich man with a homicidal habit can produce experts, apparently respectable, who will swear that at the time of the commission of the crime he was insane by reason of a brain storm, but is sane at the time of trial, has brought such expert testimony into merited contempt and the administration of criminal law into deserved distrust. The only thing to do with such a criminal is to keep him under lock and key away from the stormy stress of free life.”