The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-05-15

A man named Patrick was convicted in New York in 1902 of murder nearly two years after the crime was commit ted. It took three years to get the case argued before the court of appeals, where the sentence was confirmed in March, 1905. A further appeal to the United States supreme court occupied the whole of 1906. Three months ago came the news that the governor of New York had changed the sentence to imprisonment for life.
 One could multiply such instances by the score, and the defects they point to can all, or nearly all, be traced back to one general cause. The criminal procedure of America today is very much as ours was in the time of the Stuarts It is hopelessly entangled in technicalties, and neglects justice and common sense to chase after an impos- sible, infallibility of form, In q crim- inal case, as it is conducted across the Atlantic, it is not the prisoner in the dock, but the judge on the bench, who is really on trial. The counsel on both sides polish up thousand little points of pleading and practice and evidence, and fire them off at the judge, who has to decide upon them off-hand. If hef falls into single error, no matter how trivial or how far removed from the question of the guilt or innocence of the accused the appellate court will or der a new trial of the case almost au- tomatically.
 That is the grand distinction between the American procedure and our own. In the English courts all such errors of form are brushed aside. unless they can be shown to have caused d misear- riage of justice In the American courts any error however technical, and however little related to the fund amental issue, is held to presume prej- udice. The appellate judge considers Inot whether the verdict he is reviewing is a just one on the facts of the ease, but whether a single error of procedure was committed in reaching it. And if any such error is discovered he has then to satisfy himself not only that no prejudice to the rights of the aeT cused arose from it, but also that none could have arisen in the mind of any juryman.
 Thus it is that we find such absurd
 ties as that of the United States su- prerne court, the highest tribunal in the land, reversing a judgment because the record failed to show that the defend ant had been arraigned and had plead ed not guilty. Thus, only few months ago, a re-trial was ordered in one case | because the cross examination of q witness extended somewhat beyond the examination in chief; and a conviction was set aside in another because the ! prosecuting attorney said some things l in his speech to the jury that the ap- pellate court thought he ought not to have said; and in third case, by req son of some wholly immaterial error, q court felt constrained to reverse a Judgment which in the same breath 1t declared to be absolutely just.
 There are many other things, such as the sentimentalism of juries, the abuse of the pardoning power, the linn ited authority of the trial judge, and the abulience of the press, that favor the accused in America. But most of all is he helped by the pernicous rule that any error which it is impossible to show afirmatiyely did not prejudice the defendant must lead to a reversal of judgment Hence appeals and re- trials multiply without end. Hence lawyers and criminals flourish while justice and society helplessly suffer Anglo-American in the London Mail