The San Francisco call., 1898-02-27
MOST SUCCESSFUL
 LEGAL BURLESQUES

T HE most successful legal bur | leSque ever perpetrated on bench, bar or the public was the publica- tion in pamphlet form in 1878 of two fictitious cases purporting to be genuine decisions from an Arizona court.
 In the prospectus which preceded the cases, attention was called to the simi- larity of style and substance between l'the Arizona reports and those of the court of last appeal in Pennsylvania.
 The writer of these fictitious cases so well concealed his identity that even to this day his name has not been made public. Some of the Justices of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court took of fense at what they termed an insult.
 One in particular, Justice George Sharswood, became exceedingly irate over the insinuation and was about to institute proceedings to discover the identity of the culprit who dared draw likenesses between the Arizona judic- iary and Supreme Court of PennsyI- vania and then punish him for con- tempt of court. At that time it was thought that the decisions were bona fide products of the Arizona judicial mind. Justice Sharswood was prevent ed from taking action, however, by sev- eral of his brethren who saw the hu- nor in the burlesque phase of the cases
 The first case is written in a purely philosophical style, with a terminology which savers of Kant and Liebnitz. It is as follows:
 Silas Tomkins vs. The Commonwealth
 l. A defendant may be convicted of murder by poisoning on an indictment which charges murder by clasped knife.
 9 It is no objection to conviction that it nowhere appears on the record that the Judge before whom the case was tried was duly commissioned by the Gov
 g. It is. not an. error to asK g prisoner has to say why Judgment should not be pronounced, etc.
 4. The course of the administration of criminal justice cannot be stopped for cents.
 The opinion of the Court was delivered
 The defendant below was found guilty of the gratuitous murder of a mother and her ten children under CT a eircnmstances aEs of quite prepared to hear his counsel argu- ing that his conviction was erroneous and their client innocent It is always avs so in cence of Tomkins we. as a court of error, have really nothing to do.. Law is the hypothenuse of right angle triangle Of which logic and moral philosophy are the two other sides. Though it touches them each at one point, its general direction is quite distinct.
 
 judicial system as accidents do on our railways; but we can do without neither one nor the other. Each usually carries it's passengers in safety, and when the wrong man is now and then hanged or blown up he must console himself with the reflection that he is sacrifice to the necessities of society.
 The second case is true Arizona style and smells of powder, the knife and the tomahawk:
 With the law of this case alone 1t is our province to deal. We find here the usual parade of exceptions and points and assignments of error and paper book encrusted with authorities like bar nacles. Everything that the ingenuity of counsel could suggest has been done to confuse and complicate the decision of the case, in the hope. perhaps. that the pris- oner, concealed by the dust of argumenta- tion, might escape in sort of legal dis guise. But the eyes of Justice are too quick for that sort of thing and we, as her ministers, will block any such game without remorse.
 The plaintiff in error, in the first place. complains that he Is charged, in the third count of the indictment, with committing the alleged murder by means of a clasped knife of the value of cents, whereas the proof was that he destroyed his victims by strychnine infused in lager beer. We know nothing of this from the record The verdict was guilty on all the counts, Which means that he killed the mother