The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1909-06-26
THE THIRD DEGREE

| -iS THE THIRD DEGREE |, It is not always the individual who | attempts to take advantage of one phase or another of the unwritten law. l The State, acting through its, police, at times does the same thing. The police of New,York in: their use of "the | Third Degree in tn Sigel murder case are at the present moment overstep- ping their just powers and applying a law of their own manufacture. Why is l there no general outcry against it? Why does the public not demand that | it cease? Largely for the same reason that they have remained silent while this sort of thing has gone on before their eyes in many other cases. It is because ''the Third Degree is deemed part of the unwritten law. It is be- cause under our existing criminal sys- l tenn some such extra-legal system of preliminary inquiry is recognized to be almost inevitable. if not indeed neces- sary.
 The practical certainty of sonie sort Of preliminary inquiry in such cases has led some of the most careful stu dents of our political institutions to raise the question as to whether there
 
 present system, substituting for the illegal Third Degree lawful system of preliminary inquiry. Judge Simeon E. Baldwin of Connecticut, who is a most judicious and suggestive student of American institutions, in discussing the Exemption of the accused from examination in criminal proceedings", has this to say in one of his books:
 No prisoner indeed can hope to be exempted from examination simply be- cause the law makes no provision re- qu1r1ng 1t. Some such questioning under any system of jurisprudence he IS certain to undergo. It may come from neighbors. from busybodies, from reporters, from conSta bleS, detectives, Jaflers. It will come from them if it does not come from authority of law. And the answers obtained lying sim- ply in human memory will be easily twisted and perverted by the narrator, anxious perhaps to magnify the inn portance of the revelations his sagac- ity has secured or perhaps to screen a friend or serve a grudge.
 The author puts in a plea for a law full system or preliminary inquiry. But he is not unmindful of what this would signify. He admits that it would mean at least the partial abrogatfon of one of the distinguishing safeguards
 
 law. No court may compel a person accused of crime to go on the stand in his own case. Much less might any officer of the law by -'the Third Degree extract from a prisoner any evidence as to his wrongdoing without doing violence to the spirit of the law. But all of this may be admitted, and yet, Judge Baldwin so clearly points 0rrf fo4 preliminary examination of some kind CT other is practically inevitable in most cases of any consequence. Should the fact, then, not be acknowledged? Would it not benefit the accused him. self to have the law step in, create al tribunal of preliminary inquiry. and after throwing proper safeguards around the accused oblige him to sub init to it?
 So far from doing violence to the principles of the common law such a tribunal if it's powers were properly circumscribed and the privileges of the accused were duly protected, would put an end to much of the violence that is now done to them. Would the accused not be informed both of his own rights and the States limita- tions much more thoroughly than he is at present? Theoretically he re- ceives this information at the present time; practically the greatest advant- age is often taken of his fear and ignorance. :r,% Nor is this all. It would require many columns to exhaust the argu- ments that might be made in favor of a departure from the present system
 
 tenn of preliminary inquiry similar in some respects to that which obtains so widely on the continent of Europe.-l Nevv York Glohe