The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-01-29
auErn rNGIrsH IusrrcE.

The January number of London Na- tional Review contains long and de- tailed story of one of those remarkable miscarriages of justice. or. rather, the triumph of injustice, that are some times found outside the novels. Some of the features of the case are so un- usual that a brief statement of them will be interesting.
 In 1877 John Smith was convicted of the offense of obtaining jewelry and other valuables from women by sys- teh of false pretenses, and was sem fenced to penal servitude for five years, which term he served In 1896 Adolph Beck was arrested for exactly the same offence. He was identified by a num- Der of women who swore positively that he was the man who had swindled them. though none of the missing ar- ticles were traced to him. The police and other officials who had charge of the Smith case proved to the satisfac- ton of the court that Beck and Smith were one. Handwriting experts testi- fled that certain documents and sigma lures written by Smith were in Beck's handwriting and that the same man wrote them. On the strength of these various proofs. Beck was convicted and sentenced to seven years penal servi- tude. which sentence was carried out. This brings the matter up to the year 1904, when Beck was again ar rested. charged with similar offences, and the indictment charged previous convictions" which would have made his sentence heavier. The account goes on to state that "he was again convicted and had to plead guilty to his former conviction of 1896, and was about to be sentenced when Smith was arrested for an offence of the same kind. The case against Beck then col lapsed. and he received free pardon, which completely cleared him of the offences of both 1896 and 1904" To this part of the story we may add that a thorough Investigation was after wards made and 1t was established that Beck had not committed. any offence, but that Smith was the criminal in all three of the cases.
 | This Is a brief outline of the whole miserable affair, and there are two fea- lures of it that are especially notlce- able-the Identification of Beck and the positive testimony of the hand writing experts. The police and the Smith. yet they were not the same, as was afterwards proven. Then there were number of women, ten, in fact, who swore positively that Beck was the man who swindled or robbed them. Yet 1t was afterwards satisfactorily proven that every one of the women was mistaken. No doubt they were honest in their belief, but that only shows the difficulty of positively iden- tifying a man who resembles another Cases of mistaken identity are not un- common, but in this instance we have ten women each positively swearing '"The man in the dock was the man who robbed me" Every one of those wo- men swore falsely, but without know ing 1t. | Then we have the positive testimony of the handwriting experts. Checks which were signed by Smith in his swindling operations in 1877 were compared with the handwriting of Beck, and the experts swore that the same hand wrote all of them. This. also, was false. though the experts we may assume, were conscientious That, however. did not prevent what The Review calls this grievous miscar- riage of justice" though we think it should more properly be designated a triumph of gross injustice. Upon this kind of evidence-that of the police. the women and the experts-Aan inno- cent man was convicted and served seven years. was again convicted and was only saved by the fortunate arrest and Identification of Smith.
 But this is not all, nor the most un- pardonable part of the affair. for not only court officials. but some of even higher position were to blame. For example. when Beck was tried in 1S96 and it was charged that he was the man Smith who was convicted in 1S77 he proposed to introduce evidence that he was in Peru in 1877, and, therefore, it was impossible that he could be Smith, but for some reason, the evil dence was not allowed. Then, while he was serving his sentence, efforts were made to prove that there were certain marks on Smith which were not on Beck. An examination of Beck, and a comparison with prison records show ing Smiths peculiar markings would have shown beyond doubt that the men were not the same, but this, also, was not allowed.
 The circumstances in this case show that the most positive Identification of a prisoner by sworn witnesses may be worthless; that the evidence of po- lice and other officers may be erron- eous and that the testimony of hand writing experts Is not to be relied on. If Beck had been charged with mur- der he would probably have been con- victed and executed on testimony which was false throughout. Another thing which appears to be established Is that the English courts, or some of them, never admit that they have erred. and never get out of the groove when they get into one. It also seems to show that the English Government