Courts and Criminals | Page 9

may blandly
reply.
The answer, perhaps, is literally true, and yet the prosecutor may be
pardoned for murmuring
"Liar!" to himself as he sees that his memorandum concerning the
juror's qualifications states that he belongs to the same "lodge" with the
prisoner's uncle by marriage and carries an open account on his books
with the defendant's father.
"I think we will excuse Mr. Ananias," politely remarks the prosecutor;
then in an undertone he turns to his chief and mutters: "The old rascal!
He would have knifed us if we'd given him the chance!" And all this
time the disgruntled Mr. Ananias is wondering why, if he didn't "know

the defendant or his family," he was not accepted as a juror.
Of course, every district attorney has, or should have, information as to
each talesman's actual capabilities as a juror and something of a record
as to how he has acted under fire. If he is a member of the "special"
panel, it is easy to find out whether he has ever acquitted or convicted
in any cause celebre, and if he has acquitted any plainly guilty
defendant in the past it is not likely that his services will be required. If,
however, he has convicted in such a case the district attorney may try to
lure the other side into accepting him by making it appear that he
himself is doubtful as to the juror's desirability. Sometimes persons
accused of crime themselves, and actually under indictment, find their
way onto the panels, and more than one ex-convict has appeared there
in some inexplicable fashion. But to find them out may well require a
double shift of men working day and night for a month before the case
is called, and what may appear to be the most trivial fact thus
discovered may in the end prove the decisive argument for or against
accepting the juror.
Panel after panel may be exhausted before a jury in a great murder trial
has been selected, for each side in addition to its challenges for "cause"
or "bias" has thirty* peremptory ones which it may exercise arbitrarily.
If the writer's recollection is not at fault, the large original panel drawn
in the first Molineux trial was used up and several others had to be
drawn until eight hundred talesmen had been interrogated before the
jury was finally selected. It is usual to examine at least fifty in the
ordinary murder case before a jury is secured.
* In the State of New York.
It may seem to the reader that this scrutiny of talesmen is not strictly
preparation for the trial, but, in fact, it is fully as important as getting
ready the facts themselves; for a poor jury, either from ignorance or
prejudice, will acquit on the same facts which will lead a sound jury to
convict. A famous prosecutor used to say, "Get your jury--the case will
take care of itself."
But as the examination of the panel and the opening address come last

in point of chronology it will be well to begin at the beginning and see
what the labors of the prosecutor are in the initial stages of preparation.
Let us take, for example, some notorious case, where an unfortunate
victim has died from the effects of a poisoned pill or draught of
medicine, or has been found dead in his room with a revolver bullet in
his heart. Some time before the matter has come into the hands of the
prosecutor, the press and the police have generally been doing more or
less (usually less) effective work upon the case. The yellow journals
have evolved some theory of who is the culprit and have loosed their
respective reporters and "special criminologists" upon him. Each has its
own idea and its own methods--often unscrupulous. And each has its
own particular victim upon whom it intends to fasten the blame.
Heaven save his reputation! Many an innocent man has been ruined for
life through the efforts of a newspaper "to make a case," and, of course,
the same thing, though happily in a lesser degree, is true of the police
and of some prosecutors as well.
In every great criminal case there are always four different and
frequently antagonistic elements engaged in the work of detection and
prosecution--first, the police; second, the district attorney; third, the
press; and, lastly, the personal friends and family of the deceased or
injured party. Each for its own ends--be it professional pride, personal
glorification, hard cash, or revenge--is equally anxious to find the
evidence and establish a case. Of course, the police are the first ones
notified of the commission of a crime, but as it is now almost
universally their duty to inform at once the coroner and also the district
attorney thereof, a tripartite