Courts and Criminals Part 2

CHAPTER III. Sensationalism and Jury Trials

For the past twenty-five years we have heard the cry upon all sides that the jury system is a failure, and to this general indictment is frequently added the specification that the trials in our higher courts of criminal justice are the scenes of grotesque buffoonery and merriment, where cynical juries recklessly disregard their oaths and where morbid crowds flock to satisfy the cravings of their imaginations for details of blood and s.e.xuality.

It is unnecessary to question the honesty of those who thus picture the administration of criminal justice in America. Indeed, thus it probably appears to them. But before such an arraignment of present conditions in a highly civilized and progressive nation is accepted as final, it is well to examine into its inherent probabilities and test it by what we know of the actual facts.

In the first place, it should be remembered that the jury was inst.i.tuted and designed to protect the English freeman from tyranny upon the part of the crown. Judges were, and sometimes still are, the creatures of a ruler or unduly subject to his influence. And that ruler neither was, nor is, always the head of the nation; but just as in the days of the Normans he might have been a powerful earl whose influence could make or unmake a judge, so to-day he may be none the less a ruler if he exists in the person of a political boss who has created the judge before whom his political enemy is to be tried. The writer has seen more than one judge openly striving to influence a jury to convict or to acquit a prisoner at the dictation of such a boss, who, not content to issue his commands from behind the arras, came to the courtroom and ascended the bench to see that they were obeyed. Usually the jury indignantly resented such interference and administered a well-merited rebuke by acting directly contrary to the clearly indicated wishes of the judge.

But while admitting its theoretic value as a bulwark of liberty, the modern a.s.sailant of the jury brushes the consideration aside by a.s.serting that the system has "broken down" and "degenerated into a farce."

Let us now see how much of a farce it is. If four times out of five a judge rendered decisions that met with general approval, he would probably be accounted a highly satisfactory judge. Now, out of every one hundred indicted prisoners brought to the bar for trial, probably fifteen ought to be acquitted if prosecuted impartially and in accordance with the strict rules of evidence. In the year 1910 the juries of New York County convicted in sixty-six per cent of the cases before them. If we are to test fairly the efficiency of the system, we must deduct from the thirty-four acquittals remaining the fifteen acquittals which were justifiable. By so doing we shall find that in the year 1910 the New York County juries did the correct thing in about eighty-one cases out of every hundred. This is a high percentage of efficiency.* Is it likely that any judge would have done much better?

* The following table gives the yearly percentages of convictions and acquittals by verdict in New York County since 1901:

NUMBER NUMBER YEAR CONVICTIONS ACQUITTALS CONVICTIONS ACQUITTALS BY VERDICT BY VERDICT PER CENT PER CENT

1901........551...........344..........62............38 1902........419...........349..........55............45 1903........485...........307..........61............39 1904........495...........357..........58............42 1905........489...........299..........62............38 1906........464...........246..........65............35 1907........582...........264..........68............32 1908........649...........301..........62............38 1909........463...........235..........66............34 1910........649...........325..........66............34 After a rather long experience as a prosecutor, in which he conducted many hundreds of criminal cases, the writer believes that the ordinary New York City jury finds a correct general verdict four times out of five. As to talesmen in other localities he has no knowledge or reliable information. It seems hardly possible, however, that juries in other parts of the United States could be more heterogeneous or less intelligent than those before which he formed his conclusions. Of course, jury judgments are sometimes flagrantly wrong. But there are many verdicts popularly regarded as examples of lawlessness which, if examined calmly and solely from the point of view of the evidence, would be found to be the reasonable acts of honest and intelligent juries.

For example, the acquittal of Thaw upon the ground of insanity is usually spoken of as an ill.u.s.tration of sentimentality on the part of jurymen, and of their willingness to be swayed by their emotions where a woman is involved. But few clearer cases of insanity have been established in a court of justice. The district attorney's own experts had p.r.o.nounced the defendant a hopeless paranoiac; the prosecutor had, at a previous trial, openly declared the same to be his own opinion; and the evidence was convincing. At the time it was rendered, the verdict was accepted as a foregone conclusion. To-day the case is commonly cited as proof of the gullibility of juries and of the impossibility of convicting a rich man of a crime.

There will always be some persons who think that every defendant should be convicted and feel aggrieved if he is turned out by the jury. Yet they entirely forget, in their displeasure at the acquittal of a man whom they instinctively "know" to be guilty, that the jury probably had exactly the same impression, but were obliged under their oaths to acquit because of an insufficiency of evidence.

An excellent ill.u.s.tration of such a case is that of Nan Patterson. She is commonly supposed to have attended, upon the night of her acquittal, a banquet at which one of her lawyers toasted her as "the guilty girl who beat the case." Whether she was guilty or not, there is a general impression that she murdered Caesar Young. Yet the writer, who was present throughout the trial, felt at the conclusion of the case that there was a fairly reasonable doubt of her guilt. Even so, the jury disagreed, although the case is usually referred to as an acquittal and a monument to the sentimentality of juries.

The acquittal of Roland B. Molineux is also recalled as a case where a man, previously proved guilty, managed to escape. The writer, who was then an a.s.sistant district attorney, made a careful study of the evidence at the time, and feels confident that the great majority of the legal profession would agree with him in the opinion that the Court of Appeals had no choice but to reverse the defendant's first conviction on account of the most prejudicial error committed at the trial, and that the jury who acquitted him upon the second occasion had equally no choice when the case was presented with a proper regard to the rules of evidence and procedure. Indeed, on the second trial the evidence pointed almost as convincingly toward another person as toward the defendant.

I have mentioned the Patterson, Thaw, and Molineux trials because they are cases commonly referred to in support of the general contention that the jury system is a failure. But I am inclined to believe that any single judge, bench of judges, or board of commissioners would have reached the same result as the juries did in these instances.

It is quite true that juries, for rather obvious reasons, are more apt to acquit in murder cases than in others. In the first place, save where the defendant obviously belongs to the vicious criminal cla.s.s, a jury finds it somewhat difficult to believe, unless overwhelming motive be shown, that he could have deliberately taken another's life. Thus, with sound reason, they give great weight to the plea of self-defence which the accused urges upon them. He is generally the only witness. His story has to be disproved by circ.u.mstantial evidence, if indeed there be any. Frequently it stands alone as the only account of the homicide. Thus murder cases are almost always weaker than others, since the chief witness has been removed by death; while at the same time the nature of the punishment leads the jury unconsciously to require a higher degree of proof than in cases where the consequences are less abhorrent. All this is quite natural and inevitable. Moreover, homicide cases as a rule are better defended than others, a fact which undoubtedly affects the result. These considerations apply to all trials for homicide, notorious or otherwise, the results of which in New York County for ten years are set forth in the following table:

YEAR CONVICTIONS ACQUITTALS CONVICTIONS ACQUITTALS PER CENT PER CENT 1901.........25............17..........60............40 1902.........31............11..........74............26 1903.........42.............8..........84............16 1904.........37............14..........72............28 1905.........32............13..........71............29 1906.........53............22..........70............30 1907.........39............10..........78............22 1908.........35............17..........67............33 1909.........43............11..........80............20 1910.........45............15..........75............25 TOTAL.......382...........138......Av. 74........Av. 27 A popular impression exists at the present time that a man convicted of murder has but to appeal his case on some technical ground in order to secure a reversal, and thus escape the consequences of his crime. How wide of the mark such a belief may be, at least so far as one locality is concerned, is shown by the fact that in New York State, from 1887 to 1907, there were 169 decisions by the Court of Appeals on appeals from convictions of murder in the first degree, out of which there were only twenty-nine reversals. Seven of these defendants were again immediately tried and convicted, and a second time appealed, upon which occasion only two were successful, while five had their convictions promptly affirmed. Thus, so far as the ultimate triumph of justice is concerned, out of 169 cases in that period the appellants finally succeeded in twenty-two only.

Since 1902 there have been twenty-seven decisions rendered in first-degree murder cases by the Court of Appeals, with only three reversals.* (* Written in 1909.) The more important convictions throughout the State are affirmed with great regularity.

As to the conduct of such cases, the writer's own experience is that a murder trial is the most solemn proceeding known to the law. He has prosecuted at least fifty men for murder, and convicted more than he cares to remember. Such trials are invariably dignified and deliberate so far as the conduct of the legal side of the case is concerned. No judge, however unqualified for the bench; no prosecutor, however light-minded; no lawyer however callous, fails to feel the serious nature of the transaction or to be affected strongly by the fact that he is dealing with life, and death. A prosecutor who openly laughed or sneered at a prisoner charged with murder would severely injure his cause. The jury, naturally, are overwhelmed with the gravity of the occasion and the responsibility resting upon them.

In the Patterson, Thaw, and Molineux cases the evidence, unfortunately, dealt with unpleasant subjects and at times was revolting, but there was a quiet propriety in the way in which the witnesses were examined that rendered it as inoffensive as it could possibly be. Outside the court-room the vulgar crowd may have spat and sworn; and inside no doubt there were degenerate men and women who eagerly strained their ears to catch every item of depravity. But the throngs that filled the courtroom were quiet and well ordered, and the justified interested outnumbered the morbid.

The writer deprecates the impulse which leads judges, from a feeling that justice should be publicly administered, to throw wide the doors of every courtroom, irrespective of the subject-matter of the trial. We need have no fear of Star Chamber proceedings in America, and no harm would be done by excluding from the courtroom all persons who have no business there.

It is, of course, not unnatural that in the course of a trial occupying weeks or months the tension should occasionally be relieved by a gleam of humor. After one has been busy trying a case for a couple of weeks one goes to court and sets to work in much the same frame of mind in which one would attack any other business. But the fact that a small boy sometimes sees something funny at a funeral, or a bevy of giggling shop-girls may be sitting in the gallery at a fas.h.i.+onable wedding, argues little in respect to the solemnity or beauty of the service itself.

What are the celebrated cases-the trials that attract the attention and interest of the public? In the first place, they are the very cases which contain those elements most likely to arouse the sympathy and prejudices of a jury-where a girl has taken the life of her supposed seducer, or a husband has avenged his wife's alleged dishonor. Such cases arouse the public imagination for the very reason that every man realizes that there are two sides to every genuine tragedy of this character-the legal and the natural. Thus, aside from any other consideration, they are the obvious instances where justice is most likely to go astray.

In the next place, the defence is usually in the hands of counsel of adroitness and ability; for even if the prisoner has no money to pay his lawyer, the latter is willing to take the case for the advertising he will get out of it.

Third, a trial which lasts for a long time naturally results in creating in the jury's mind an exaggerated idea of the prisoner's rights, namely, the presumption of innocence and the benefit of the reasonable doubt. For every time that the jury will hear these phrases once in a petty larceny or forgery case, they will hear them in a lengthy murder trial a hundred times. They see the defendant day after day, and the relation becomes more personal. Their responsibility seems greater toward him than toward the defendant in petty cases.

Last, as previously suggested, murder cases are apt to be inherently weaker than others, and more often depend upon circ.u.mstantial evidence.

The results of such cases are therefore an inadequate test of the efficiency of a jury system. They are, in fact, the precise cases where, if at all, the jury might be expected to go wrong.

But juries would go astray far less frequently even in such trials were it not for that most vicious factor in the administration of criminal justice-the "yellow" journal. For the impression that public trials are the scenes of buffoonery and brutality is due to the manner in which these trials are exploited by the sensational papers.

The instant that a sensational homicide occurs, the aim of the editors of these papers is-not to see that a swift and sure retribution is visited upon the guilty, or that a prompt and unqualified vindication is accorded to the innocent, but, on the contrary, so to handle the matter that as many highly colored "stories" as possible can be run about it.

Thus, where the case is perfectly clear against the prisoner, the "yellow" press seeks to bolster up the defence and really to justify the killing by a thinly disguised appeal to the readers' pa.s.sions. Not infrequently, while the editorial page is mourning the prevalence of homicide, the front columns are bristling with sensational accounts of the home-coming of the injured husband, the heartbreaking confession of the weak and erring wife, and the sneering nonchalance of the seducer, until a public sentiment is created which, if it outwardly deprecates the invocation of the unwritten law, secretly avows that it would have done the same thing in the prisoner's place.

This antecedent public sentiment is fostered from day to day until it has unconsciously permeated every corner of the community. The juryman will swear that he is unaffected by what he has read, but unknown to himself there are already tiny furrows in his brain along which the appeal of the defence will run.

In view of this deliberate perversion of truth and morals, the euphemisms of a hard-put defendant's counsel when he pictures a chorus girl as an angel and a coa.r.s.e bounder as a St. George seem innocent indeed. It is not within the rail of the courtroom but within the pages of these sensational journals that justice is made a farce. The phrase "contempt of court" has ceased practically to have any significance whatever. The front pages teem with caricatures of the judge upon the bench, of the individual jurors with exaggerated heads upon impossible bodies, of the lawyers ranting and bellowing, juxtaposed with sketches of the defendant praying beside his prison cot or firing the fatal shot in obedience to a message borne by an angel from on high.

How long would the "unwritten law" play any part in the administration of criminal justice if every paper in the land united in demanding, not only in its editorials, but upon its front pages, that private vengeance must cease? Let the "yellow" newspapers confine themselves simply to an accurate report of the evidence at the trial, with a reiterated insistence that the law must take its course. Let them stop pandering to those morbid tastes which they have themselves created. Let the "Sympathy Sisters," the photographer, and the special artist be excluded from the court-room. When these things are done, we shall have the same high standard of efficiency upon the part of the jury in great murder trials that we have in other cases.

CHAPTER IV. Why Do Men Kill?

When a shrewd but genial editor called me up on the telephone and asked me how I should like to write an article on the above lurid t.i.tle, I laughed in his-I mean the telephone's face.

"My dear fellow!" I said (I should only have the nerve to call him that over a wire). "It would ruin me! How could I keep my self-respect and write that kind of sensational stuff-Why do men kill? Why do men eat? Why do men drink? Why do men love? Why do men-"

"Look here!" he interrupted. "I want to know why one man kills another man. If we knew why, maybe we could stop it, couldn't we? We could try to, anyhow. And you know something about it. You've prosecuted nearly a hundred men for murder. Get the facts-that's what I want. Cut the adjectives and morality, and get down to the reasons. Anything particularly undignified about that?" And he rang off.

I arose and walked over to the bookcase on which reposed several shelves of "minutes" of criminal trials. They were dusty and depressing. Practically every one of them was a memento of some poor devil gone to prison or to the chair. Where were they now-and why did they kill-yes, why DID they?

I glanced along the red-labeled backs.

"People versus Candido." Now why did HE kill? I remembered the Italian perfectly. He killed his friend because the latter had been too attentive to his wife. "People versus Higgins." Why did he? That was a drunken row on a New Year's Eve within the sound of Trinity chimes. "People versus Sterling Greene." Yes, he was a colored man-I recalled the evidence-drink and a "yellow gal." "People versus Mock Duck"-a Chinese feud between the On Leong Tong and the Hip Sing Tong-a vendetta, first one c.h.i.n.k shot and then another, turn and turn about, running back through Mott Street, New York, Boston, San Francisco, until the origin of the quarrel was lost in the dim Celestial mists across the sea. Out of the first four cases the following motives: Jealousy-1. Drink-1. Drink and jealousy-1. Scattering (how can you term a "Tong" row?)-1.

I began to get interested. Supposing I dug out all the homicide cases I had ever tried, what would the result show as to motive for the killing? Would drink and women account for seventy-five per cent? Mentally I ran my eye back over nearly ten years. What OTHER motives had the defendants at the bar had? There was Laudiero-an Italian "Camorrista"-he had killed simply for the distinction it gave him among his countrymen and the satisfaction he felt at being known as a "bad" man-a "capo maestra." There was Joseph Ferrone-pure jealousy again. Hendry-animal hate intensified by drink. Yoscow-a deliberate murder, planned in advance by several of a gang, to get rid of a young bully who had made himself generally unpleasant. There was Childs, who had killed, as he claimed, in self-defence because he was set upon and a.s.saulted by rival runners from another seaman's boarding house. Really it began to look as if men killed for a lot of reasons.

One consideration at once suggested itself. How about the killings where the murderer is never caught? The prisoners tried for murder are only a mere fraction of those who commit murder. True, and the more deliberate the murder, the greater, unfortunately, the chance of the villain getting away. Still, in cases merely of suspected murder, or in cases where no evidence is taken, it would be manifestly unfair arbitrarily to a.s.sign motives for the deed, if deed it was. No, one must start with the a.s.sumption, sufficiently accurate under all the circ.u.mstances, that the killings in which the killer is caught are fairly representative of killings as a whole.

All crimes naturally tend to divide themselves into two cla.s.ses-crimes against property and crimes against the person, each cla.s.s having an entirely different a.s.sortment of reasons for their commission.

There can be practically but one motive for theft, burglary, or robbery. It is, of course, conceivable that such crimes might be perpetrated for revenge-to deprive the victim of some highly prized possession. But in the main there is only one object-unlawful gain. So, too, blackmail, extortion, and kidnapping are all the products of the desire for "easy money." But, unquestionably, this is the reason for murder in comparatively few cases.

The usual motive for crimes against the person-a.s.sault, manslaughter, mayhem, murder, etc.-is the desire to punish, or be avenged upon another by inflicting personal pain upon him or by depriving him of his most valuable a.s.set-life. And this desire for retaliation or revenge generally grows out of a recent humiliation received at the hands of the other person, a real or fancied wrong to oneself, a member of one's family, or one's property. But this was too easy an answer to my friend's question. He wanted and deserved more than that, and I set out to give it to him.

My first inquiry was in the direction of original sources. I sought out the man in the district attorney's office who had had the widest general experience and put the question to him. This was Mr. Charles C. Nott, Jr., (now judge of the General Sessions) who had been trying murder cases for nearly ten years. It so happened that he had kept a complete record of all of them and this he courteously placed at my disposal. The list contains sixty-two cases, and the defendants were of divers races. These homicides included seventeen committed in cold blood (about twenty-five per cent, an extraordinary percentage) from varying motives, as follows: One defendant (white) murdered his colored mistress simply to get rid of her; another killed out of revenge because the deceased had "licked" him several times before; another, having quarrelled with his friend over a gla.s.s of soda water, later on returned and precipitated a quarrel by striking him, in the course of which he killed him; another because the deceased had induced his wife to desert him; another lay in wait for his victim and killed him without the motive ever being ascertained; one man killed his brother to get a sum of money, and another because his brother would not give him money; another because he believed the deceased had betrayed the Armenian cause to the Turks; another because he wished to get the deceased out of the way in order to marry his wife; and another because deceased had knocked him down the day before. One man had killed a girl who had ridiculed him; and one a girl who had refused to marry him; another had killed his daughter because she could no longer live in the house with him; one, an informer, had been the victim of a Black Hand vendetta; and the last had poisoned his wife for the insurance money in order to go off with another woman. There were two cases of infanticide, one in which a woman threw her baby into the lake in Central Park, and another in which she gave her baby poison. Besides these murders, five homicides had been committed in the course of perpetrating other crimes, including burglary and robbery.

Pa.s.sing over three cases of culpable negligence resulting in death, we come to thirty-seven homicides during quarrels, some of which might have been technically cla.s.sified as murders, but which being committed "in the heat of pa.s.sion," in practically every instance resulted in a verdict of manslaughter. The quarrels often arose over the most trifling matters. One was a dispute over a broom, another over a horse blanket, another over food, another over a twenty-five cent bet in a pool game, another over a loan of fifty cents, another over ten cents in a c.r.a.p game, and still another over one dollar and thirty cents in a c.r.a.p game. Five men were killed in drunken rows which had no immediate cause except the desire to "start something." One man killed another because he had not prevented the theft of some lumber, one (a policeman) because the deceased would not "move on" when ordered, one because a bartender refused to serve him with any more drinks, and one (a bartender) because the deceased insisted that he should serve more drinks. One man was killed in a quarrel over politics, one in a fuss over some beer, one in a card game, one trying to rob a fruit-stand, one in a dispute with a s.h.i.+p's officer, one in a dance hall row. One man killed another whom he found with his wife, and one wife killed her husband for a similar cause; another wife killed her husband simply because she "could not stand him," and one because he was fighting with their son. One man was killed by another who was trying to collect from him a debt of six hundred dollars. One quarrel resulting in homicide arose because the defendant had pointed out deceased to the police, another because the partic.i.p.ants called each other names, and another arose out of an alleged seduction. Three homicides grew out of street rows originating in various ways. One man killed another who was fighting with a friend of the first, a janitor was killed in a "continuous row" which had been going on for a long time, and one homicide was committed for "nothing in particular."

This astonis.h.i.+ng olla podrida of reasons for depriving men of their lives leaves one stunned and confused. Is it possible to deduce any order out of such homicidal chaos? Still, an attempt to cla.s.sify such diverse causes enables one to reach certain general conclusions. Out of the sixty-two homicides there were seventeen cold-blooded murders, with deliberation and premeditation (in such cases the reasons for the killing are by comparison unimportant); three homicides due to negligence, five committed while perpetrating a felony; thirty-seven manslaughters, due in sixteen cases to quarrels (simply), thirteen to drink, four to disputes over money, three to women, one to race antagonism.