The Room with the Little Door

by Roland Burnham Molineux

But if the State has not proved me guilty? the prisoner may ask. A fallacy, my friend; in these days you must prove your innocence. Of course the accused is convicted. No man, however innocent, can successfully combat the fourth degree. Everything has worked like a charm; but at last, after two years, perhaps, or more, the case reaches the Court of Appeals. Then the master stroke is given, the finesse of which is startling even to old criminal lawyers. That the conviction has been obtained illegally is universally admitted. How will the attorney for the people induce the Court of Appeals to sustain it? Of course, the method will be in the nature of an innovation; for the fourth degree is a new thing, and just as certainly will it be something unjust.

Judging others by himself, the Able Assistant will rely on the use of money. Special counsel is obtained to try to have the illegal conviction sustained in the higher courts. A man of national reputation, the leader of his party, and noted for his political influence and his willingness to use it; who, strangely enough, when high in office appointed some of the judges who are to listen to his argument, may be retained to argue before the Court of Appeals, and beg that it allow the conviction to stand. The honorable special counsel receives a great many thousands of dollars for doing this, and in one case had at last the opportunity of gratifying a little personal grudge of nearly twenty years’ standing. As the epitaph of the Western man read, “He did his damnedest; angels could do no more.”

In one case I have in mind nothing could equal this person’s eloquence when arguing in the higher courts against a new trial for the defendant, unless it was his effort when, a few weeks later, he insisted in a lower court that the defendant must be tried again; thus proving that there are two sides to a case—the inside and outside. Consistency is a jewel, a rare one in the Criminal Court Building, County of New York, for after all this fuss and expenditure, the “good lady” who held the office of District Attorney dared not try the case, but left it to his successor. All this is not an imaginary case; it is my own. I know whereof I speak.

Just consider for a moment another case recently tried. Does it not furnish further proof of the fourth degree?

Two men were involved—one was to be killed in earnest, because he had inherited money; the other was nearly killed with kindness to make the former killing possible. The office had no case against the first man. But they arrested him; nor against the second man, so they arrested him, also. The Assistant District Attorney who prosecuted them had a private practice while holding public office. The charge against these men was, that they had killed a third man, who really died a natural death—an old man who had money. Now began the offers to each prisoner, separately, to inform on the other. This always happens. The result in this case was nil. Both protested their innocence, but the fearless prosecutor found the weaker-natured of the two during these interviews. It was the second man. To him was offered absolute freedom—and what else?—if he would say the other did the murder. He did so. The examination took place. There the other proved the informer’s story a lie; he proved a perfect alibi, which could not be shaken. The legal adviser of the people had employed—perjury. That was the one thing proved. Circumstances were now changed; that story would not work. Remember there were millions at stake, and the Able Assistant had a private practice. So quite a different lie was invented and sworn to by the second man. This was also proved to be a perjury, something for which no prosecutor’s witness is ever prosecuted. Still the first man, the legatee, was held for trial.

But during the long wait of years in the Tombs for him, how did the second man, the Assistant’s tool, fare? I said he was killed with kindness. Of course that is not literal; but the Fearless Prosecutor took good care of him; he was supplied with every comfort—no key was ever turned on him.

In return he subscribed to any and all statements which were required to kill number one. At the trial he made still a different confession from the two previous ones; the third one was that he himself had committed the murder at the instigation of the defendant. A self-confessed murderer, a triple perjurer, he is now scot-free, and an innocent man is in the Death-Chamber.

These are the methods of the fourth degree. The Court of Appeals does not approve of them; one District Attorney has been removed from office by the Governor; but another, he of the ever-ready biography, has handed them down to his sons as an heritage of fame.

The public has no idea of the enormous number of cases which are reversed by the Court of Appeals. Here is a recent one. A young man was sentenced to imprisonment for twenty-five years by a General Session’s judge. But the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court, when reviewing the case, said: “The defendant’s guilt has not been proven. It is not even proven by the evidence that any crime was committed.” This is a fact, and any one who will take the trouble to read the published decisions will find it and many more such instances.

Of the convictions obtained by the District Attorney in the Court of General Sessions, a small proportion of the convicted men have money to appeal to the higher courts, and the percentage of new trials granted is high. How much higher would it be if all cases were appealed? In other words, think of the poor devils who are in State prison unjustly because of their lack of money.