The Project Gutenberg eBook, Courts, Criminals and the Camorra, by Arthur Cheney Train

COURTS, CRIMINALS
AND THE CAMORRA

COURTS, CRIMINALS
AND THE CAMORRA
BY
ARTHUR TRAIN

Formerly Assistant District Attorney, New York County

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1912

Copyright, 1912, by
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

Published September, 1912

To
CHARLES ALBERT PERKINS
OF THE NEW YORK BAR

CONTENTS

I.—COURTS

II.—CRIMINALS

III.—THE CAMORRA

COURTS

CHAPTER I
THE PLEASANT FICTION OF THE PRESUMPTION
OF INNOCENCE

There was a great to-do some years ago in the city of New York over an ill-omened young person, Duffy by name, who, falling into the bad graces of the police, was most incontinently dragged to head-quarters and “mugged” without so much as “By your leave, sir,” on the part of the authorities. Having been photographed and measured (in most humiliating fashion) he was turned loose with a gratuitous warning to behave himself in the future and see to it that he did nothing which might gain him even more invidious treatment.

Now, although many thousands of equally harmless persons had been similarly treated, this particular outrage was made the occasion of a vehement protest to the mayor of the city by a certain member of the judiciary, who pointed out that such things in a civilized community were shocking beyond measure, and called upon the mayor to remove the commissioner of police and all his staff of deputy commissioners for openly violating the law which they were sworn to uphold. But, the commissioner of police, who has sometimes enforced the penal statutes in a way that has made him unpopular with machine politicians, saw nothing wrong in what he had done, and, what was more, said so most outspokenly. The judge said, “You did,” and the commissioner said, “I didn’t.” Specifically, the judge was complaining of what had been done to Duffy, but more generally he was charging the police with despotism and oppression and with systematically disregarding the sacred liberties of the citizens which it was their duty to protect.

Accordingly the mayor decided to look into the matter for himself, and after a lengthy investigation came to the alleged conclusion that the “mugging” of Duffy was a most reprehensible thing and that all those who were guilty of having any part therein should be instantly removed from office. He, therefore, issued a pronunciamento to the commissioner demanding the official heads of several of his subordinates, which order the commissioner politely declined to obey. The mayor thereupon removed him and appointed a successor, ostensibly for the purpose of having in the office a man who should conduct the police business of the city with more regard for the liberties of the inhabitants thereof. The judge who had started the rumpus expressed himself as very much pleased and declared that now at last a new era had dawned wherein the government was to be administered with a due regard for law.

Now, curiously enough, although the judge had demanded the removal of the commissioner on the ground that he had violated the law and been guilty of tyrannous and despotic conduct, the mayor had ousted him not for pursuing an illegal course in arresting and “mugging” a presumptively innocent man (for illegal it most undoubtedly was), but for inefficiency and maladministration in his department.

Said the mayor in his written opinion:

“After thinking over this matter with the greatest care, I am led to the conclusion that as mayor of the city of New York I should not order the police to stop taking photographs of people arrested and accused of crime or who have been indicted by grand juries. That grave injustice may occur the Duffy case has demonstrated, but I feel that it is not the taking of the photograph that has given cause to the injustice, but the inefficiency and maladministration of the police department, etc.”

In other words, the mayor set the seal of his official approval upon the very practice which caused the injustice to Duffy. “Mugging” was all right, so long as you “mugged” the right persons.

The situation thus outlined is one of more than passing interest. Whatever the merely political outcome may be, and it may be far-reaching, a sensitive point in our governmental nervous system has been touched and a condition uncovered that sooner or later must be diagnosed and cured.

For the police have no right to arrest and photograph a citizen unconvicted of crime, since it is contrary to law. And it is ridiculous to assert that the very guardians of the law may violate it so long as they do so judiciously and do not molest the Duffys. The trouble goes deeper than that.

The truth is that we are up against that most delicate of situations, the concrete adjustment of a theoretical individual right to a practical necessity. The same difficulty has always existed and will always continue to exist whenever emergencies requiring prompt and decisive action arise or conditions obtain that must be handled effectively without too much discussion. It is easy while sitting on a piazza with your cigar to recognize the rights of your fellow-men, but if you were starving on the high seas in an open boat—! You may assert most vigorously the right of the citizen to immunity from arrest without legal cause, but if you saw a seedy character sneaking down a side street at three o’clock in the morning, his pockets bulging with jewelry and silver—! Que voulez vous, m’sieu? Would you have the policeman on post insist on the fact that a burglary had been committed being established beyond peradventure before arresting the suspect, who in the meantime would undoubtedly escape? Of course, the worthy officer sometimes does this, but his conduct in that case becomes the subject of an investigation on the part of his superiors. In fact, the rules of the New York police department require him to arrest all persons carrying bags in the small hours who cannot give a satisfactory account of themselves. Yet there is no such thing under the laws of the State as a right “to arrest on suspicion.” No citizen may be arrested under the statutes unless a crime has actually been committed. Thus, the police regulations deliberately compel every officer either to violate the law or to be made the subject of charges for dereliction of duty. A confusing state of things, truly, to a man who wants to do his duty by himself and by his fellow-citizens!

The present author once wrote a book dealing with the practical administration of criminal justice, in which the unlawfulness of arrest on mere “suspicion” was discussed at length and given a prominent place. But when the time came for publication that portion of it was omitted at the earnest solicitation of certain of the authorities on the ground that as such arrests were absolutely necessary for the enforcement of the criminal law a public exposition of their illegality would do infinite harm. Now, as it seems, the time has come when the facts, for one reason or another, must be faced. The difficulty does not end, however, with “arrest on suspicion,” “the third degree,” “mugging,” or their allied abuses. It really goes to the root of our whole theory of the administration of the criminal law. Is it possible that on final analysis we may find that our enthusiastic insistence upon certain of the supposedly fundamental liberties of the individual has led us into a condition of legal hypocrisy vastly less desirable than the frank attitude of our continental neighbors toward such subjects?

The Massachusetts Constitution of 1785 concludes with the now famous words: “To the end that this may be a government of laws and not of men.” That is the essence of the spirit of American government. Our forefathers had arisen and thrown off the yoke of England and her intolerable system of penal government, in which an accused had no right to testify in his own behalf and under which he could be hung for stealing a sheep. “Liberty!” “Liberty or death!” That was the note ringing in the minds and mouths of the signers of the Declaration and framers of the Constitution. That is the popular note to-day of the Fourth of July orator and of the Memorial Day address. This liberty was to be guaranteed by laws in such a way that it was never to be curtailed or violated. No mere man was to be given an opportunity to tamper with it. The individual was to be protected at all costs. No king, or sheriff, or judge, or officer was to lay his finger on a free man save at his peril. If he did, the free man might immediately have his “law”—“have the law on him,” as the good old expression was—for no king or sheriff was above the law. In fact, we were so energetic in providing safeguards for the individual, even when a wrong-doer, that we paid very little attention to the effectiveness of kings or sheriffs or what we had substituted for them. And so it is to-day. What candidate for office, what silver-tongued orator or senator, what demagogue or preacher could hold his audience or capture a vote if, when it came to a question of liberty, he should lift up his voice in behalf of the rights of the majority as against the individual? The Republican party—“The Grand Old Party of Liberty!” The Democratic party—“The Party of Liberty!” The Socialist-Labor party—“of Liberty.” “Liberty forever!”

Accordingly in devising our laws we have provided in every possible way for the freedom of the citizen from all interference on the part of the authorities. No one may be stopped, interrogated, examined, or arrested unless a crime has been committed. Every one is presumed to be innocent until shown to be guilty by the verdict of a jury. No one’s premises may be entered or searched without a warrant which the law renders it difficult to obtain. Every accused has the right to testify in his own behalf, like any other witness. The fact that he has been held for a crime by a magistrate and indicted by a grand jury places him at not the slightest disadvantage so far as defending himself against the charge is concerned, for he must be proven guilty beyond any reasonable doubt. These illustrations of the jealousy of the law for the rights of citizens might be multiplied to no inconsiderable extent. Further, our law allows a defendant convicted of crime to appeal to the highest courts, whereas if he be acquitted the people or State have no right of appeal at all.

Without dwelling further on the matter it is enough to say that in general the State constitutions, their general laws, or penal statutes provide that a person who is accused or suspected of crime must be presumed innocent and treated accordingly until his guilt has been affirmatively established in a jury trial; that meantime he must not be confined or detained unless a crime has in fact been committed and there is at least reasonable cause to believe that he has committed it; and, further, that if arrested he must be given an immediate opportunity to secure bail, to have the advice of counsel, and must in no way be compelled to give any evidence against himself. So much for the law. It is as plain as a pikestaff. It is printed in the books in words of one syllable. So far as the law is concerned we have done our best to perpetuate the theories of those who, fearing that they might be arrested without a hearing, transported for trial, and convicted in a king’s court before a king’s judge for a crime they knew nothing of, insisted on “liberty or death.” They had had enough of kings and their ways. Hereafter they were to have “a government of laws and not of men.”

But the unfortunate fact remains that all laws, however perfect, must in the end be administered by imperfect men. There is, alas! no such thing as a government of laws and not of men. You may have a government more of laws and less of men, or vice versa, but you cannot have an auto-administration of the Golden Rule. Sooner or later you come to a man—in the White House, or on a wool sack, or at a desk in an office, or in a blue coat and brass buttons—and then, to a very considerable extent, the question of how far ours is to be a government of laws or of men depends upon him. Generally, so far as he is concerned, it is going to be of man, for every official finds that the letter of the law works an injustice many times out of a hundred. If he is worth his salary he will try to temper justice with mercy. If he is human he will endeavor to accomplish justice as he sees it so long as the law can be stretched to accommodate the case. Thus, inevitably there is a conflict between the theory of the law and its application. It is the human element in the administration of the law that enables lawyers to get a living. It is usually not difficult to tell what the law is; the puzzle is how it is going to be applied in any individual case. How it is going to be applied depends very largely upon the practical side of the matter and the exigencies of existing conditions.

It is pretty hard to apply inflexibly laws over a hundred years old. It is equally hard to police a city of a million or so polyglot inhabitants with a due regard to their theoretic constitutional rights. But suppose in addition that these theoretic rights are entirely theoretic and fly in the face of the laws of nature, experience, and common-sense? What then? As the missionary said, “The cannibals are coming behind, there is a lion in front, there are sharks in the water, I can’t swim anyway—what in hell am I to do?” What is a police commissioner to do who has either got to make an illegal arrest or let a crook get away, who must violate the rights of men illegally detained by outrageously “mugging” them or egregiously fail to have a record of the professional criminals in his bailiwick? He does just what all of us do when we are “up against it,”—he “takes a chance.” But in the case of the police the thing is so necessary that there ceases practically to be any “chance” about it. They have got to prevent crime and arrest criminals. If they fail they are out of a job, and others more capable or less scrupulous take their places. The fundamental law qualifying all systems is that of necessity. You can’t let professional crooks carry off a voter’s silverware simply because the voter, being asleep, is unable instantly to demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that his silver has been stolen. You can’t permit burglars to drag sacks of loot through the streets of the city at 4 A. M. simply because they are presumed to be innocent until proven guilty. And if “arrest on suspicion” were not permitted, demanded by the public, and required by the police ordinances, away would go the crooks and off would go the silverware, the town would be full of “leather snatchers” and “strong arm men,” respectable citizens would be afraid to go out o’ nights, and liberty would degenerate into license. That is the point. We Americans, or at least the newer ones of us, have a fixed idea that “liberty” means the right to steal apples from our neighbor’s orchard without interference. Now, somewhere or other, there has got to be a switch and a strong arm to keep us in order, and the switch and arm must not wait until the apples are stolen and eaten before getting busy. If we come climbing over the fence sweating apples at every pore, is Farmer Jones to go and count his apples before grabbing us?

The most presumptuous of all presumptions is this “presumption of innocence.” It really doesn’t exist, save in the mouths of judges and in the pages of law books. Yet as much to-do is made about it as if it were a living legal principle. Every judge in a criminal case is required to charge the jury in form or substance somewhat as follows: “The defendant is presumed to be innocent until that presumption is removed by competent evidence.”... “This presumption is his property, remaining with him throughout the trial and until rebutted by the verdict of the jury.”... “The jury has no right to consider the fact that the defendant stands at the bar accused of a crime by an indictment found by the grand jury.” Shades of Sir Henry Hawkins! Does the judge expect that they are actually to swallow that? Here is a jury sworn “to a true verdict find” in the case of an ugly looking customer at the bar who is charged with knocking down an old man and stealing his watch. The old man—an apostolic looking octogenarian—is sitting right over there where the jury can see him. One look at the plaintiff and one at the accused and the jury may be heard to mutter, “He’s guilty,—all right!”

“Presumed to be innocent?” Why, may I ask? Don’t the jury and everybody else know that this good old man would never, save by mistake, accuse anybody falsely of crime? Innocence! Why, the natural and inevitable presumption is that the defendant is guilty! The human mind works intuitively by comparison and experience. We assume or presume with considerable confidence that parents love their children, that all college presidents are great and good men, and that wild bulls are dangerous animals. We may be wrong. But it is up to the other fellow to show us the contrary.

Now, if out of a clear sky Jones accuses Robinson of being a thief we know by experience that the chances are largely in favor of Jones’s accusation being well-founded. People as a rule don’t go rushing around charging each other with being crooks unless they have some reason for it. Thus, at the very beginning the law flies in the face of probabilities when it tells us that a man accused of crime must be presumed to be innocent. In point of fact, whatever presumption there is (and this varies with the circumstances) is all the other way, greater or less depending upon the particular attitude of mind and experience of the individual.

This natural presumption of guilt from the mere fact of the charge is rendered all the more likely by reason of the uncharitable readiness with which we believe evil of our fellows. How unctuously we repeat some hearsay bit of scandal. “I suppose you have heard the report that Deacon Smith has stolen the church funds?” we say to our friends with a sententious sigh—the outward sign of an invisible satisfaction. Deacon Smith after the money-bag? Ha! ha! Of course, he’s guilty! These deacons are always guilty! And in a few minutes Deacon Smith is ruined forever, although the fact of the matter is that he was but counting the money in the collection-plate. This willingness to believe the worst of others is a matter of common knowledge and of historical and literary record. “The evil that men do lives after them—” It might well have been put, “The evil men are said to have done lives forever.” However unfair, this is a psychologic condition which plays an important part in rendering the presumption of innocence a gross absurdity.

But let us press the history of Jones and Robinson a step further. The next event in the latter’s criminal history is his appearance in court before a magistrate. Jones produces his evidence and calls his witnesses. Robinson, through his learned counsel, cross-examines them and then summons his own witnesses to prove his innocence. The proceeding may take several days or perhaps weeks. Briefs are submitted. The magistrate considers the testimony at great length and finally decides that he believes Robinson guilty and must hold him for the action of the grand jury. You might now, it would perhaps seem, have some reason for suspecting that Robinson was not all that he should be. But no! He is still presumed in the eyes of the law, and theoretically in the eyes of his fellows, to be as innocent as a babe unborn. And now the grand jury take up and sift the evidence that has already been gone over by the police judge. They, too, call witnesses and take additional testimony. They likewise are convinced of Robinson’s guilt and straightway hand down an indictment accusing him of the crime. A bench warrant issues. The defendant is run to earth and ignominiously haled to court. But he is still presumed to be innocent! Does not the law say so? And is not this a “government of laws”? Finally, the district attorney, who is not looking for any more work than is absolutely necessary, investigates the case and begins to prepare it for trial. As the facts develop themselves Robinson’s guilt becomes more and more clear. The unfortunate defendant is given any opportunity he may desire to explain away the charge, but to no purpose.

The district attorney knows Robinson is guilty, so does everybody else, including Robinson. At last this presumably innocent man is brought to the bar for trial. The jury scan his hang-dog countenance upon which guilt is plainly written. They contrast his appearance with that of the honest Jones. They know he has been accused, held by a magistrate, indicted by a grand jury, and that his case, after careful scrutiny, has been pressed for trial by the public prosecutor. Do they really presume him innocent? Not much! They presume him guilty. And if by any chance Robinson puts in any defence, they require him, as a practical matter, to prove himself innocent. “So soon as I see him come through dot leetle door in the back of the room, then I know he’s guilty!” as the foreman said in the old story. What good does the presumption of innocence, so-called, do for the miserable Robinson? None whatever—save perhaps to console him in the long days pending his trial. But such a legal hypocrisy could never have deceived anybody. How much better it would be to cast aside all such cant and frankly admit that the attitude of the continental law toward the man under arrest is founded upon common-sense and the experience of mankind. If he is the wrong man it should not be difficult for him to demonstrate the fact. At any rate circumstances are against him, and he should be ready to explain them away if he can.

The fact of the matter is, that in dealing with practical conditions, police methods differ very little in different countries. The authorities may perhaps keep considerably more detailed and obvious “tabs” on us in Germany and Russia than in the United States, but if we are once caught in a compromising position we experience about the same treatment wherever we happen to be. In France (and how the apostles of liberty condemn the iniquity of the administration of criminal justice in that country!) the suspect or undesirable receives a polite official call or note, in which he is invited to leave the locality as soon as convenient. In New York he is arrested by a plain-clothes man, yanked down to Mulberry Street for the night, and next afternoon is thrust down the gangplank of a just departing Fall River liner. Many an inspector (without mentioning names) has earned unstinted praise (even from the New York Evening Post) by “clearing New York of crooks” or having a sort of “round-up” of suspicious characters whom, after proper identification, he has ejected from the city by the shortest and quickest possible route. Yet in the case of every person thus arrested and driven out of the town he has undoubtedly violated constitutional rights and taken the law into his own hands. What crimes are committed in the name of law, O Liberty!

What redress can a penniless tramp secure against a stout inspector of police able and willing to spend a considerable sum of money in his own defence, and with the entire force ready and eager to get at the tramp and put him out of business? He swallows his pride, if he has any, and ruefully slinks out of town for a period of enforced abstinence from the joys of metropolitan existence. Yet who shall say that, in spite of the fact that it is a theoretic outrage upon liberty, this cleaning out of the city is not highly desirable? One or two comparatively innocent men may be caught in the ruck, but they generally manage to intimate to the police that the latter have “got them wrong” and duly make their escape. The others resume their tramp from city to city, clothed in the presumption of their innocence.

Since the days of the Doges or of the Spanish Inquisition there has never been anything like the morning inspection of arrested suspects at the New York police head-quarters.[1] One by one the unfortunate persons arrested during the previous night (although not charged with any crime) are pointed out to the assembled detective force, who scan them from beneath black velvet masks in order that they themselves may not be recognized when they meet again on Broadway or the darker side streets of the city. Each prisoner is described and his character and past performances are rehearsed by the inspector or head of the bureau. He is then measured, “mugged,” and, if lucky, turned loose. What does his liberty amount to or his much-vaunted legal rights if the city is to be made safe? Yet why does not some apostle of liberty raise his voice and cry aloud concerning the wrong that has been done? Are not the rights of a beggar as sacred as those of a bishop? Yea, verily, and the statutes say plainly and have said plainly for years that no one shall be arrested unless a crime has been committed.

One of the most sacred rights guaranteed to those of us who can afford to pay for it under the law is that of not being compelled to give evidence against ourselves or to testify to anything which might degrade or incriminate us. “I’se not compelled to discriminate against myself!” as the old darkey, who knew his rights very well, said. Now, this is all very fine for the chap who has his lawyer at his elbow or has had some similar previous experience. He may wisely shut up like a clam and set at defiance the tortures of the third degree. But how about the poor fellow arrested on suspicion of having committed a murder, who has never heard of the legal provision in question, or, if he has, is cajoled or threatened into “answering one or two questions”? Few police officers take the trouble to warn those whom they arrest that what they say may be used against them. What is the use? Of course, when they testify later at the trial they inevitably begin their testimony with the stereotyped phrase, “I first warned the defendant that anything which he said would be used against him.” If they did warn him they probably whispered it or mumbled it so that he didn’t hear what they said, or, in any event, whether they said it or not, half a dozen of them probably took him into a back room and, having set him with his back against the wall, threatened and swore at him until he told them what he knew, or thought he knew, and perhaps confessed his crime. When the case comes to trial the police give the impression that the accused quietly summoned them to his cell to make a voluntary statement. The defendant denies this, of course, but the evidence goes in and the harm has been done. No doubt the methods of the inquisition are in vogue the world over under similar conditions. Everybody knows that a statement by the accused immediately upon his arrest is usually the most important evidence that can be secured in any case. It is a police officer’s duty to secure one if he can do so by legitimate means. It is his custom to secure one by any means in his power. As his oath, that such a statement was voluntary, makes it ipso facto admissible as evidence, the statutes providing that a defendant cannot be compelled to give evidence against himself are practically nullified.

The beneficent provisions to be found in most codes of criminal procedure, and particularly in that of the State of New York, while highly valuable under some circumstances, are of no avail to a defendant who has never heard of them. These are to the effect that the police must convey a message free of charge to the family or lawyer of every person arrested, that each prisoner is entitled as matter of law to a reasonable delay before being compelled to submit to a hearing, that he has the right to the services of counsel, and the further right to have a stenographic report of the evidence taken before the magistrate. The ordinary petty criminal is arrested without a warrant, often illegally, hustled to the nearest police court, put through a species of examination composed largely of invective and assertion on the part of the officer, found guilty, and “sent away” to the Island, without lawyer, adjournment, or notice to his family. “Off with his head!”—just like that! He isn’t presumed to be innocent at all. The “cop” tells him “to shut his mouth or he will knock his block off.” “I caught this feller doin’ so-and-so! He’s a lazy loafer, judge,” he says to the magistrate. The latter takes a look at the defendant, concludes that the officer is right, and off goes the prisoner to the workhouse.

When it comes to the more important cases the accused is usually put through some sort of an inquisitorial process by the captain at the station-house. If he is not very successful at getting anything out of the prisoner the latter is turned over to the sergeant and a couple of officers who can use methods of a more urgent character. If the prisoner is arrested by head-quarters detectives, various efficient devices to compel him to “give up what he knows” may be used—such as depriving him of food and sleep, placing him in a cell with a “stool-pigeon” who will try to worm a confession out of him, and the usual moral suasion of a heart-to-heart(!) talk in the back room with the inspector.

This is the darker side of the picture of practical government. It is needless to say that the police do not usually suggest the various safeguards and privileges which the law accords to defendants thus arrested, but the writer is free to confess that, save in exceptional cases, he believes the rigors of the so-called third degree to be greatly exaggerated. Frequently in dealing with rough men rough methods are used, but considering the multitude of offenders, and the thousands of police officers, none of whom have been trained in a school of gentleness, it is surprising that severer treatment is not met with on the part of those who run foul of the criminal law. The ordinary “cop” tries to do his duty as effectively as he can. With the average citizen gruffness and roughness go a long way in the assertion of authority. Policemen cannot have the manners of dancing-masters. The writer is not quarrelling with the conduct of police officers. On the contrary, the point he is trying to make is that in the task of policing a big city, the rights of the individual must indubitably suffer to a certain extent if the rights of the multitude are to be properly protected. We can make too much of small injustices and petty incivilities. Police business is not gentle business. The officers are trying to prevent you and me from being knocked on the head some dark night or from being chloroformed in our beds. Ten thousand men are trying to do a thirty-thousand-man job.

The struggle to keep the peace and put down crime is a hard one anywhere. It requires a strong arm that cannot show too punctilious a regard for theoretical rights when prompt decisions have to be made and equally prompt action taken. The thieves and gun men have got to be driven out. Suspicious characters have got to be locked up. Somehow or other a record must be kept of professional criminals and persons likely to be active in law-breaking. These are necessities in every civilized country. They are necessities here. Society employs the same methods of self-protection the world over. No one presumes a person charged with crime to be innocent, either in Delhi, Pekin, Moscow, or New York. Under proper circumstances we believe him guilty. When he comes to be tried the jury consider the evidence, and if they are pretty sure he is guilty they convict him. The doctrine of reasonable doubt is almost as much of a fiction as that of the presumption of innocence. From the time a man is arrested until arraignment he is quizzed and interrogated with a view to inducing him to admit his offence or give some evidence that may help convict him. Logically, why should not a person charged with a crime be obliged to give what explanation he can of the affair? Why should he have the privilege of silence? Doesn’t he owe a duty to the public the same as any other witness? If he is innocent he has nothing to fear; if he is guilty—away with him! The French have no false ideas about such things and at the same time they have a high regard for liberty. They merely recognize the fact that there is a point at which the interest of the public and its liberty is bound to conflict with the interest of the individual and his freedom to do as he likes. And we instinctively recognize this, too, just as everybody does. We merely cheat ourselves into thinking that our liberty is something different from French liberty because we have a lot of laws upon our statute books that are there only to be disregarded and would have to be repealed instantly if enforced.

Take, for instance, the celebrated provision of the penal laws that the failure of an accused to testify in his own behalf shall not be taken against him. Such a doctrine flies in the face of human nature. If a man sits silent when witnesses under oath accuse him of a crime it is an inevitable inference that he has nothing to say—that no explanation of his would explain. The records show that the vast majority of accused persons who do not avail themselves of the opportunity to testify are convicted. Thus, the law which permits a defendant to testify in reality compels him to testify, and a much-invoked doctrine of liberty turns out to be a privilege in name only. In France or America alike a man accused of crime sooner or later has to tell what he knows—or take his medicine. It makes little difference whether he does so under the legalized examination of a “juge d’instruction” in Paris or under the quasi-voluntary interrogations of an assistant district attorney or police inspector in New York. It is six of one and half a dozen of the other if at his trial in France he remains mute under examination or in America refrains from availing himself of the privilege of testifying in his own behalf.

Thus, we are reluctantly forced to the conclusion that all human institutions have their limitations, and that, however theoretically perfect a government of laws may be, it must be administered by men whose chief regard will not be the idealization of a theory of liberty so much as an immediate solution of some concrete problem. And, of course, we have known this all along, but instead of doing away with impossible laws we have preferred to have prohibition on Main Street and free liquor at the hotel side doors, closed Sundays on the statute books and a wide-open town in practice, immunity from arrest in theory under cover of the agreeable delusion that America is the freest country in the world, and in reality the same situation that exists in continental countries.

Not that the matter, after all, is particularly important to most of us, but laws which exist only to be broken create a disrespect and disregard for law which may ultimately be dangerous. It would be perfectly simple for the legislature to say that a citizen might be arrested under circumstances tending to cause a reasonable suspicion, even if he had not committed a crime, and it would be quite easy to pass a statute providing that the commissioner of police might “mug” and measure all criminals immediately after conviction. As it is, the prison authorities won’t let him, so he has to do it while he has the opportunity.

It must be admitted that this is rather hard on the innocent, but they now have to suffer with the guilty for the sins of an indolent and uninterested legislature. Moreover, if such a right of arrest were proposed, some wiseacre or politician would probably rise up and denounce the suggestion as the first step in the direction of a military dictatorship. Thus, we shall undoubtedly fare happily on in the blissful belief that our personal liberties are the subject of the most solicitous and zealous care on the part of the authorities, guaranteed to us under a government which is not of men but of laws, until one of us happens to be arrested (by mistake, of course) and learns by sad experience the practical methods of the police in dealing with criminals and the agreeable but deceptive character of the pleasant fiction of the presumption of innocence.

CHAPTER II
PREPARING A CRIMINAL CASE FOR TRIAL

When the prosecuting attorney in a great criminal trial arises to open the case to the impanelled jury, very few, if any, of them have the slightest conception of the enormous expenditure of time, thought, and labor which has gone into the preparation of the case and made possible his brief and easily delivered speech. For in this opening address of his there must be no flaw, since a single misstated or overstated fact may prejudice the jury against him and result in his defeat. Upon it also depends the jury’s first impression of the case and of the prosecutor himself—no inconsiderable factor in the result—and in a trial of importance its careful construction with due regard to what facts shall be omitted (in order to enhance their dramatic effect when ultimately proven) may well occupy the district attorney every evening for a week. But if the speech itself has involved study and travail, it is as nothing compared with the amount required by that most important feature of every criminal case—the selection of the jury.

For a month before the trial, or whenever it may be that the jury has been drawn, every member upon the panel has been subjected to an unseen inquisitorial process. The prosecutor, through his own or through hired sleuths, has studied with microscopic care the family history, the business standing and methods, the financial responsibility, the political and social affiliations, and the personal habits and “past performances” of each and every talesman. When at the beginning of the trial they, one by one, take the witness-chair (on what is called the voir dire) to subject themselves to an examination by both sides as to their fitness to serve as jurors in the case, the district attorney probably has close at hand a rather detailed account of each, and perchance has great difficulty in restraining a smile when some prospective juror, in his eagerness either to serve or to escape, deliberately equivocates in answer to an important question as to his personal history.

“Are you acquainted with the accused or his family?” mildly inquires the assistant prosecutor.

“No—not at all,” the talesman 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 into a thousand pieces 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, pretty good 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 celèbre, 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[2] 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.

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 draft 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 race for glory frequently results which adds nothing to the dignity of the administration of criminal justice.

The coroner is at best no more than an appendix to the legal anatomy, and frequently he is a disease. The spectacle of a medical man of small learning and less English trying to preside over a court of first instance is enough to make the accused himself chuckle for joy.

Not long ago the coroners of New York discovered that, owing to the fact that the district attorney or his representatives generally arrived first at the scene of any crime, there was nothing left for the “medicos” to do, for the district attorney would thereupon submit the matter at once to the grand jury instead of going through the formality of a hearing in the coroner’s court. The legal medicine men felt aggrieved, and determined to be such early birds that no worm should them escape. Accordingly, the next time one of them was notified of a homicide he raced his horse down Madison Avenue at such speed that he collided with a trolley car and broke his leg.

Another complained to the district attorney that the assistants of the latter, who had arrived at the scene of an asphyxiation before him, had bungled everything.

“Ach, dose young men!” he exclaimed, wringing his hands—“Dose young men, dey come here und dey opened der vindow und let out der gas und all mine evidence esgaped.”

The same coroner on another occasion discovered that a murderer had removed the body of his victim to New Jersey, thus depriving him of any corpse upon which to hold his inquest. A sympathetic reporter thereupon suggested that it would be well to have a law prohibiting any such removal by the party committing a homicide.

“Dot vas a good idea!” solemnly replied the medical Solon. “It should be made a crime! I will haf it proposed at der next legislature.”

It is said that this interesting personage once instructed his jury to find that “the diseased came to his death from an ulster on the stomach.”

These anecdotes are, perhaps, what judges would call obiter dicta, yet the coroner’s court has more than once been utilized as a field in the actual preparation of a criminal case. When Roland B. Molineux was first suspected of having caused the death of Mrs. Adams by sending the famous poisoned package of patent-medicine to Harry Cornish through the mails, the assistant district attorney summoned him as a witness to the coroner’s court and attempted to get from him in this way a statement which Molineux would otherwise have refused to make.

When all the first hullabaloo is over and the accused is under arrest and safely locked up, it is usually found that the police have merely run down the obvious witnesses and made a prima facie case. All the finer work remains to be done either by the district attorney himself or by the detective bureau working under his immediate direction or in harmony with him. Little order has been observed in the securing of evidence. Every one is a fish who runs into the net of the police, and all is grist that comes to their mill. The district attorney sends for the officers who have worked upon the case and for the captain or inspector who has directed their efforts, takes all the papers and tabulates all their information. His practiced eye shows him at once that a large part is valueless, much is contradictory, and all needs careful elaboration. A winnowing process occurs then and there; and the officers probably receive a “special detail” from head-quarters and thereafter take their orders from the prosecutor himself. The detective bureau is called in and arrangements made for the running down of particular clews. Then he will take off his coat, clear his desk, and get down to work.

Of course, his first step is to get all the information he can as to the actual facts surrounding the crime itself. He immediately subpœnas all the witnesses, whether previously interrogated by the police or not, who know anything about the matter, and subjects them to a rigorous cross-examination. Then he sends for the police themselves and cross-examines them. If it appears that any witnesses have disappeared he instructs his detectives how and where to look for them. Often this becomes in the end the most important element in the preparation for the trial. Thus in the Nan Patterson case the search for and ultimate discovery of Mr. and Mrs. Morgan Smith (the sister and brother-in-law of the accused) was one of its most dramatic features. After they had been found it was necessary to indict and then to extradite them in order to secure their presence within the jurisdiction, and when all this had been accomplished it proved practically valueless.

It frequently happens that an entire case will rest upon the testimony of a single witness whose absence from the jurisdiction would prevent the trial. An instance of such a case was that of Albert T. Patrick, for without the testimony of his alleged accomplice—the valet Jones—he could not have been convicted of murder. The preservation of such a witness and his testimony thus becomes of paramount importance, and rascally witnesses sometimes enjoy considerable ease, if not luxury, at the expense of the public while waiting to testify. Often, too, a case of great interest will arise where the question of the guilt of the accused turns upon the evidence of some one person who, either from mercenary motives or because of “blood and affection,” is unwilling to come to the fore and tell the truth. A striking case of this sort occurred some ten years ago. The “black sheep” of a prominent New York family forged the name of his sister to a draft for thirty thousand dollars. This sister, who was an elderly woman of the highest character and refinement, did not care to pocket the loss herself and declined to have the draft debited to her account at the bank. A law-suit followed, in which the sister swore that the name signed to the draft was not in her handwriting. She won her case, but some disinterested though officious person laid the matter before the district attorney. The forger was arrested and his sister was summoned before the grand jury. Here was a pleasant predicament. If she testified for the State her brother would undoubtedly go to prison for many years, to say nothing of the notoriety for the entire family which so sensational a case would occasion. She, therefore, slipped out of the city and sailed for Europe the night before she was to appear before the grand jury. Her brother was in due course indicted and held for trial in large bail, but there was and is no prospect of convicting him for his crime so long as his sister remains in the voluntary exile to which she has subjected herself. She can never return to New York to live unless something happens either to the indictment or her brother, neither of which events seems likely in the immediate future.

Perhaps, if the case is one of shooting, the weapon has vanished. Its discovery may lead to the finding of the murderer. In one instance where a body was found in the woods with a bullet through the heart there was nothing to indicate who had committed the crime. The only scintilla of evidence was an exploded cartridge—a small thing on which to build a case. But the district attorney had the hammer marks upon the cap magnified several hundred times and then set out to find the rifle which bore the hammer which had made them. Thousands of rifles all over the State were examined. At last in a remote lumber camp was found the weapon which had fired the fatal bullet. The owner was arrested, accused of the murder, and confessed his crime. In like manner, if it becomes necessary to determine where a typewritten document was prepared the letters may be magnified, and by examining the ribbons of suspected machines the desired fact may be ascertained. The magnifying glass still plays an important part in detecting crime, although usually in ways little suspected by the general public.

On the other hand, where the weapon has not been spirited away the detectives may spend weeks in discovering when and where it was purchased. Every pawnshop, every store where a pistol could be bought, is investigated, and under proper circumstances the requisite evidence to show deliberation and premeditation may be secured.

These investigations are naturally conducted at the very outset of the preparation of the case. The weapon, in seven trials out of ten, is the most important thing in it. By its means it can generally be demonstrated whether the shooting was accidental or intentional—and whether or not the killing was in self-defence.

Where this last plea is interposed it is usually made at once upon the arrest, the accused explaining to the police that he fired only to save his own life. In such a situation, where the killing is admitted, practically the entire preparation will centre upon the most minute tests to determine whether or not the shot was fired as the accused claims that it was. The writer can recall at least a dozen cases in his own experience where the story of the defendant, that the revolver was discharged in a hand-to-hand struggle, was conclusively disproved by experimenting with the weapon before the trial. There was one homicide in which a bullet perforated a felt cap and penetrated the forehead of the deceased. The defendant asserted that he was within three feet of his victim when he fired, and that the other was about to strike him with a bludgeon. A quantity of felt, of weight similar to that of the cap, was procured and the revolver discharged at it from varying distances. A microscopic examination showed that certain discolorations around the bullet-hole (claimed by the defence to be burns made by the powder) were, in fact, grease marks and that the shot must have been fired from a distance of about fifteen feet. The defendant was convicted on his own story, supplemented by the evidence of the witness who made the tests.

The most obvious and first requirement is, as has been said, to find the direct witnesses to the facts surrounding the crime, commit their statements under oath to writing, so that they cannot later be denied or evaded, and make sure that these witnesses will not only hold no intercourse with the other side, but will be on hand when wanted. This last is not always an easy task, and various expedients often have to be resorted to, such as placing hostile witnesses under police surveillance, or in some cases in “houses of detention,” and hiding others in out-of-the-way places, or supplying them with a bodyguard if violence is to be anticipated. When the proper time comes the favorable witnesses must be duly drilled or coached, which does not imply anything improper, but means merely that they must be instructed how to deliver their testimony, what answers are expected to certain questions, and what facts it is intended to elicit from them. Witnesses are often offended and run amuck because they are not given a chance upon the stand to tell the story of their lives. This must be guarded against and steps taken to have their statements given in such a way that they are audible and intelligible. A few lessons in elementary elocution are generally vitally necessary. The man with the bassoon voice must be tamed, and the birdlike old lady made to chirp more loudly. But all this is the self-evident preparation which must take place in every case, and while highly important is of far less interest than the development of the circumstantial evidence which is the next consideration of the district attorney.

The discovery and proper proof of minute facts which tend to demonstrate the guilt of an accused are the joy of the natural prosecutor, and he may in his enthusiasm spend many thousands of dollars on what seems, and often is, an immaterial matter. Youthful officials intrusted with the preparation of important cases often become unduly excited and forget that the taxpayers are paying the bills. The writer remembers sitting beside one of these enthusiasts during a celebrated trial. A certain woman witness had incidentally testified to a remote meeting with the deceased at which a certain other woman was alleged to have been present. The matter did not seem of much interest or importance, but the youth in question seized a yellow pad and excitedly wrote in blue pencil, “Find Birdie” (the other lady) “at any cost!” This he handed to a detective, who hastened importantly away. Let us hope that “Birdie” was found speedily and in an inexpensive manner.

When the case against Albert T. Patrick, later convicted of the murder of the aged William M. Rice, was in course of preparation it was found desirable to show that Patrick had called up his accomplice on the telephone upon the night of the murder. Accordingly, the telephone company was compelled to examine several hundred thousand telephone slips to determine whether or not this had actually occurred. While the fact was established in the affirmative, the company now destroys its slips in order not to have to repeat the performance a second time.

Likewise, in the preparation of the Molineux case it became important to demonstrate that the accused had sent a letter under an assumed name ordering certain remedies. As a result, one of the employees of the patent-medicine company spent several months going over their old mail orders and comparing them with a certain sample, until at last the letter was unearthed. Of course, the district attorney had to pay for it, and it was probably worth what it cost to the prosecution, although Molineux’s conviction was reversed by the Court of Appeals and he was acquitted upon his second trial.

The danger is, however, that a prosecutor who has an unlimited amount of money at his disposal may be led into expenditures which are hardly justified simply because he thinks they may help to secure a conviction. Nothing is easier than to waste money in this fashion, and public officials sometimes spend the county’s money with considerably more freedom than they would their own under similar circumstances.

The legitimate expenses connected with the preparation of every important case are naturally large. For example, diagrams must be prepared, photographs taken of the place of the crime, witnesses compensated for their time and their expenses paid, and, most important of all, competent experts must be engaged. This leads us to an interesting aspect of the modern jury trial.

When no other defence to homicide is possible the claim of insanity is frequently interposed. Nothing is more confusing to the ordinary juryman than trying to determine the probative value of evidence touching unsoundness of mind, and the application thereto of the legal test of criminal responsibility. In point of fact, juries are hardly to be blamed for this, since the law itself is antiquated and the subject one abounding in difficulty. Unfortunately the opportunity for vague yet damaging testimony on the part of experts, the ease with which any desired opinion can be defended by a slight alteration in the hypothetical facts, and the practical impossibility of exposure, have been seized upon with avidity by a score or more of unscrupulous alienists who are prepared to sell their services to the highest bidder. These men are all the more dangerous because, clever students of mental disease and thorough masters of their subject as they are, they are able by adroit qualifications and skilful evasions to make half-truths seem as convincing as whole ones. They ask and receive large sums for their services, and their dishonest testimony must be met and refuted by the evidence of honest physicians, who, by virtue of their attainments, have a right to demand substantial fees. Even so, newspaper reports of the expense to the State of notorious trials are grossly exaggerated. The entire cost of the first Thaw trial to the County of New York was considerably less than twenty thousand dollars, and the second trial not more than half that amount. To the defence, however, it was a costly matter, as the recent schedules in bankruptcy of the defendant show. Therein it appears that one of his half-dozen counsel still claims as owing to him for his services on the first trial the modest sum of thirty-five thousand dollars! The cost of the whole defence was probably ten times that sum. Most of the money goes to the lawyers, and the experts take the remainder.

It goes without saying that both prosecutor and attorney for the defence must be masters of the subject involved. A trial for poisoning means an exhaustive study not only of analytic chemistry, but of practical medicine on the part of all the lawyers in the case, while a plea of insanity requires that, for the time being, the district attorney shall become an alienist, familiar with every aspect of paranoia, dementia præcox, and all other forms of mania. He must also reduce his knowledge to concrete, workable form, and be able to defeat opposing experts on their own ground. But such knowledge comes only by prayer and fasting—or, perhaps, rather by months of hard and remorseless grind.

The writer once prosecuted a druggist who had, by mistake, filled a prescription for a one-fourth-grain pill of calomel with a one-fourth-grain pill of morphine. The baby for whom the pill was intended died in consequence. The defence was that the prescription had been properly filled, but that the child was the victim of various diseases, from acute gastritis to cerebro-spinal meningitis. In preparation the writer was compelled to spend four hours every evening for a week with three specialists, and became temporarily a minor expert on children’s diseases. To-day he is forced to admit that he would not know a case of acute gastritis from one of mumps. But the druggist was convicted.

Yet it is not enough to prepare for the defence you believe the accused is going to interpose. A conscientious preparation means getting ready for any defence he may endeavor to put in. Just as the prudent general has an eye to every possible turn of the battle and has, if he can, re-enforcements on the march, so the prosecutor must be ready for anything, and readiest of all for the unexpected. He must not rest upon the belief that the other side will concede any fact, however clear it may seem. Some cases are lost simply because it never occurs to the district attorney that the accused will deny something which the State has twenty witnesses to prove. The twenty witnesses are, therefore, not summoned on the day of trial, the defendant does deny it, and as it is a case of word against word the accused gets the benefit of the doubt and, perhaps, is acquitted.

No case is properly prepared unless there is in the court-room every witness who knows anything about any aspect of the case. No one can foretell when the unimportant will become the vital. Most cases turn on an unconsidered point. A prosecutor once lost what seemed to him the clearest sort of a case. When it was all over, and the defendant had passed out of the court-room rejoicing, he turned to the foreman and asked the reason for the verdict.

“Did you hear your chief witness say he was a carpenter?” inquired the foreman.

“Why, certainly,” answered the district attorney.

“Did you hear me ask him what he paid for that ready-made pine door he claimed to be working on when he saw the assault?”

The prosecutor recalled the incident and nodded.

“Well, he said ten dollars—and I knew he was a liar. A door like that don’t cost but four-fifty!”

It is, perhaps, too much to require a knowledge of carpentry on the part of a lawyer trying an assault case. Yet the juror was undoubtedly right in his deduction.

In a case where insanity is the defence, the State must dig up and have at hand every person it can find who knew the accused at any period of his career. He will probably claim that in his youth he was kicked in a game of foot-ball and fractured his skull, that later he fell into an elevator shaft and had concussion of the brain, or that he was hit on the head by a burglar. It is usually difficult, if not impossible, to disprove such assertions, but the prosecutor must be ready, if he can, to show that foot-ball was not invented until after the defendant had attained maturity, that it was some other man who fell down the elevator shaft, and to produce the burglar to deny that the assault occurred. Naturally, complete preparation for an important trial demands the presence of many witnesses who ultimately are not needed and who are never called. Probably in most such cases about half the witnesses do not testify at all.

Most of what has been said has related to the preparation for trial of cases where the accused is already under arrest when the district attorney is called into the case. If this stage has not been reached the prosecutor may well be called upon to exercise some of the functions of a detective in the first instance.

A few years ago it was brought to the attention of the New York authorities that many blackmailing letters were being received bearing the name of “Lewis Jarvis.” These were of a character to render the apprehension of the writer of them a matter of much importance. The letters directed that the replies be sent to a certain box in the New York post-office, but as the boxes are numerous and close together it seemed doubtful if “Lewis Jarvis” could be detected when he called for his mail. The district attorney, the police, and the post-office officials finally evolved the scheme of plugging the lock of “Lewis Jarvis’s” box with a match. The scheme worked, for “Jarvis,” finding that he could not use his key, went to the delivery window and asked for his mail. The very instant the letters reached his hand the gyves were upon the wrists of one of the best-known attorneys in the city.

When the district attorney has been apprised that a crime has been committed, and that a certain person is the guilty party, he not infrequently allows the suspect to go his way under the careful watch of detectives, and thus often secures much new evidence against him. In this way it is sometimes established that the accused has endeavored to bribe the witnesses and to induce them to leave the State, while the whereabouts of stolen loot is often discovered. In most instances, however, the district attorney begins where the police leave off, and he merely supplements their labors and prepares for the actual trial itself. But the press he has always with him, and from the first moment after the crime up to the execution of the sentence or the liberation of the accused, the reporters dog his footsteps, sit on his doorstep, and deluge him with advice and information.

Now a curious feature about the evidence “worked up” by reporters for their papers is that little of it materializes when the prosecutor wishes to make use of it. Of course, some reporters do excellent detective work, and there are one or two veterans (like Gus. Roeder of the World) attached to the criminal courts in New York City who, in addition to their literary capacities, are natural-born sleuths, and combine with a knowledge of criminal law, almost as extensive as that of a regular prosecutor, a resourcefulness and nerve that often win the case for whichever side they espouse. I have frequently found that these men knew more about the cases which I was prosecuting than I did myself, and a tip from them has more than once turned defeat into victory. But newspaper men, for one reason or another, are loath to testify, and usually make but poor witnesses. They feel that their motives will be questioned, and are naturally unwilling to put themselves in an equivocal position. The writer well remembers that in the Mabel Parker case, where the defendant, a young and pretty woman, had boasted of her forgeries before a roomful of reporters, it was impossible, when her trial was called, to find more than one of them who would testify—and he had practically to be dragged to the witness chair. In point of fact, if reporters made a practice of being witnesses it would probably hurt their business. But, however much “faked” news may be published, a prosecutor who did not listen to all the hints the press boys had to give would make a great mistake; and as allies and advisers they are often invaluable, for they can tell him where and how to get evidence of which otherwise he would never hear.

The week before a great case is called is a busy one for the prosecutor in charge. He is at his office early to interview his main witnesses and go over their testimony with them so that their regular daily work may not be interrupted more than shall be actually necessary. Some he cautions against being over-enthusiastic and others he encourages to greater emphasis. The bashful “cop” is badgered until at last he ceases to begin his testimony in the cut-and-dried police fashion.

“On the morning of the twenty-second of July, about 3.30 A.M., while on post at the corner of Desbrosses Street——,” he starts.

“Oh, quit that!” shouts the district attorney. “Tell me what you saw in your own words.”

The “cop” blushes and stammers:

“Aw, well, on the morning of the twenty-second of July, about 3.30 A.M.——”

“Look here!” yells the prosecutor, jumping to his feet and shaking his fist at him, “do you want to be taken for a d—n liar? ‘Morning of the twenty-second of July, about 3.30 A.M., while on post!’ You never talked like that in your life.”

By this time the “cop” is “mad clear through.”

“I’m no liar!” he retorts. “I saw the cuss pull his gun and shoot!”

“Well, why didn’t you say so?” laughs the prosecutor, and Patrick, mollified with a cigar, dimly perceives the objectionable feature of his testimony.

About this time one of the sleuths comes in to report that certain much-desired witnesses have been “located” and are in custody downstairs. The assistant makes immediate preparation for taking their statements. Then one of the experts comes in for a chat about a new phase of the case occasioned by the discovery that the defendant actually did have spasms when an infant. The assistant wisely makes an appointment for the evening. A telegram arrives saying that a witness for the defence has just started for New York from Philadelphia and should be duly watched on arrival. The district attorney sends for the assistant to inquire if he has looked up the law on similar cases in Texas and Alabama—which he probably has not done; and a friend on the telephone informs him that Tomkins, who has been drawn on the jury, is a boon companion of the prisoner and was accustomed to play bridge with him every Sunday night before the murder.

Coincidently, some private detectives enter with a long report on the various members of the panel, including the aforesaid Tomkins, whom they pronounce to be “all right,” and as never having, to their knowledge, laid eyes on the accused. Finally, in despair, the prosecutor locks himself in his library with a copy of the Bible, “Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations,” and a volume of celebrated speeches, to prepare his summing up, for no careful trial lawyer opens a case without first having prepared, to some extent, at least, his closing address to the jury. He has thought about this for weeks and perhaps for months. In his dreams he has formulated syllogisms and delivered them to imaginary yet obstinate talesmen. He has glanced through many volumes for similes and quotations of pertinency. He has tried various arguments on his friends until he knows just how, if he succeeds in proving certain facts and the defence expected is interposed, he is going to convince the twelve jurors that the defendant is guilty and, perhaps, win an everlasting reputation as an orator himself.

This superficial sketch of how an important criminal case is got ready for trial would be incomplete without some further reference to something which has been briefly hinted at before—preparation upon its purely legal aspect. This may well demand almost as much labor as that required in amassing the evidence. Yet a careful and painstaking investigation of the law governing every aspect of the case is indispensable to success. The prosecutor with a perfectly clear case may see the defendant walk out of court a free man, simply because he has neglected to acquaint himself with the various points of law which may arise in the course of the trial, and the lawyer for an accused may find his client convicted upon a charge to which he has a perfectly good legal defence, for the same reason.

Looking at it from the point of view of the prisoner’s counsel, it is obvious that it is quite as efficacious to free your client on a point of law, without having the case go to the jury at all, as to secure an acquittal at their hands.

At the conclusion of the evidence introduced in behalf of the State there is always a motion made to dismiss the case on the ground of alleged insufficiency in the proof. This has usually been made the subject of the most exhaustive study by the lawyers for the defence, and requires equal preparation on the part of the prosecutor. The writer recalls trying a bankrupt, charged with fraud, where the lawyer for the defendant had written a brief of some three hundred pages upon the points of law which he proposed to argue to the court upon his motion to acquit. But, unfortunately, his client pleaded guilty and the volume was never brought into play.

But a mastery of the law, a thorough knowledge and control of the evidence, a careful preparation for the opening and closing addresses, and an intimate acquaintance with the panel from which the jury is to be drawn are by no means the only elements in the preparation for a great legal battle. One thing still remains, quite as important as the rest—the selection of the best time and the best court for the trial. “A good beginning” in a criminal case means a beginning before the right judge, the proper jury, and at a time when that vague but important influence known as public opinion augurs success. A clever criminal lawyer, be he prosecutor or lawyer for the defendant, knows that all the preparation in the world is of no account provided his case is to come before a stupid or biased judge, or a prejudiced or obstinate jury. Therefore, each side, in a legal battle of importance, studies, as well as it can, the character, connections, and cast of mind of the different judges who may be called upon to hear the case, and, like a jockey at the flag, tries to hurry or delay, as the case may be, until the judicial auspices appear most favorable. A lawyer who has a weak defence seeks to bring the case before a weak judge, or, if public clamor is loud against his client, makes use of every technical artifice to secure delay, by claiming that there are flaws in the indictment, or by moving for commissions to take testimony in distant points of the country. The opportunities for legal procrastination are so numerous that in a complicated case the defence may often delay matters for over a year. This may be an important factor in the final result.

Yet even this is not enough, for, ultimately, it is the judge’s charge to the jury which is going to guide their deliberations and, in large measure, determine their verdict. The lawyers for the defence, therefore, prepare long statements of what they either believe or pretend to believe to be the law. These statements embrace all the legal propositions, good or bad, favorable to their side of the case. If they can induce the judge to follow these so much the better for their client, for even if they are not law it makes no difference, since the State has no appeal from an acquittal in a criminal case, no matter how much the judge has erred. In the same way, but not in quite the same fashion, the district attorney prepares “requests to charge,” but his desire for favorable instructions should be, and generally is, curbed by the consideration that if the judge makes any mistake in the law and the defendant is convicted he can appeal and upset the case. Of course, some prosecutors are so anxious to convict that they will wheedle or deceive a judge into giving charges which are not only most inimical to the prisoner, but so utterly unsound that a reversal is sure to follow; but when one of these professional bloodhounds is baying upon the trail all he thinks of is a conviction—that is all he wants, all the public will remember; to him will be the glory; and when the case is finally reversed he will probably be out of office. These “requests” cover pages, and touch upon every phase of law applicable or inapplicable to the case. Frequently they number as many as fifty, sometimes many more. It is “up to” the judge to decide “off the bat” which are right and which are wrong. If he guesses that the right one is wrong or the wrong one right the defendant gets a new trial.

CHAPTER III
SENSATIONALISM AND JURY TRIALS

For the past twenty-five years we have heard the cry upon all sides that the jury system is a failure. Indeed, such to-day is prevalently believed to be the case; and to this general indictment is frequently added the specification that the trials in our higher courts of criminal justice are the scenes of grotesque buffoonery and heartless merriment, where cynical juries recklessly disregard their oaths and where morbid crowds flock to satisfy the cravings of their imaginations for details of blood and sexuality.

It is unnecessary to question the honesty of those who thus picture the administration of criminal justice in America. Indeed, thus it probably appears to them. But before such an arraignment of present conditions in a highly civilized and progressive nation is accepted as final, it is well to examine into its inherent probabilities and test it by what we know of the actual facts.

In the first place, it should be remembered that the jury was instituted and designed to protect the English freeman from tyranny upon the part of the crown. Judges were, and sometimes still are, the creatures of a ruler or unduly subject to his influence. And that ruler neither was, nor is, always the head of the nation; but just as in the days of the Normans he might have been a powerful earl whose influence could make or unmake a judge, so to-day he may be none the less a ruler if he exists in the person of a political boss who has created the judge before whom his political enemy is to be tried. The writer has seen more than one judge openly striving to influence a jury to convict or to acquit a prisoner at the dictation of such a boss, who, not content to issue his commands from behind the arras, came to the court-room and ascended the bench to see that they were obeyed. Usually the jury indignantly resented such interference and administered a well-merited rebuke by acting directly contrary to the clearly indicated wishes of the judge.

But while admitting its theoretic value as a bulwark of liberty, the modern assailant of the jury brushes the consideration aside by asserting that the system has “broken down” and “degenerated into a farce.”

Let us now see how much of a farce it is. If four times out of five a judge rendered decisions that met with general approval, he would probably be accounted a highly satisfactory judge. Now, out of every one hundred indicted prisoners brought to the bar for trial, probably fifteen ought to be acquitted if prosecuted impartially and in accordance with the strict rules of evidence. In the year 1910 the juries of New York County convicted in sixty-six per cent of the cases before them. If we are to test fairly the efficiency of the system, we must deduct from the thirty-four acquittals remaining the fifteen acquittals which were justifiable. By so doing we shall find that in the year 1910 the New York County juries did the correct thing in about eighty-one cases out of every hundred. This is a high percentage of efficiency.[3] Is it likely that any judge would have done much better?

After a rather long experience as a prosecutor, in which he has conducted many hundreds of criminal cases, the writer believes that the ordinary New York City jury finds a correct general verdict four times out of five. As to talesmen in other localities he has no knowledge or reliable information. It seems hardly possible, however, that juries in other parts of the United States could be more heterogeneous or less intelligent than those before which he formed his conclusions. Of course, jury judgments are sometimes flagrantly wrong. But there are many verdicts popularly regarded as examples of lawlessness which, if examined calmly and solely from the point of view of the evidence, would be found to be the reasonable acts of honest and intelligent juries.

For example, the acquittal of Thaw upon the ground of insanity is usually spoken of as an illustration of sentimentality on the part of jurymen, and of their willingness to be swayed by their emotions where a woman is involved. But few clearer cases of insanity have been established in a court of justice. The district attorney’s own experts had pronounced the defendant a hopeless paranoiac; the prosecutor had, at a previous trial, openly declared the same to be his own opinion; and the evidence was convincing. At the time it was rendered, the verdict was accepted as a foregone conclusion. To-day the case is commonly cited as proof of the gullibility of juries and of the impossibility of convicting a rich man of a crime.

There will always be some persons who think that every defendant should be convicted and feel aggrieved if he is turned out by the jury. Yet they entirely forget, in their displeasure at the acquittal of a man whom they instinctively “know” to be guilty, that the jury probably had exactly the same impression, but were obliged under their oaths to acquit because of an insufficiency of evidence.

An excellent illustration of such a case is that of Nan Patterson. She is commonly supposed to have attended, upon the night of her acquittal, a banquet at which one of her lawyers toasted her as “the guilty girl who beat the case.” Whether she was guilty or not, there is a general and well-founded impression that she murdered Cæsar Young. Yet the writer, who was present throughout the trial, felt at the conclusion of the case that there was a fairly reasonable doubt of her guilt. Even so, the jury disagreed, although the case is usually referred to as an acquittal and a monument to the sentimentality of juries.

The acquittal of Roland B. Molineux is also recalled as a case where a man, previously proved guilty, managed to escape. The writer, who was then an assistant district attorney, made a careful study of the evidence at the time, and feels confident that the great majority of the legal profession would agree with him in the opinion that the Court of Appeals had no choice but to reverse the defendant’s first conviction on account of the most prejudicial error committed at the trial, and that the jury who acquitted him upon the second occasion had equally no choice when the case was presented with a proper regard to the rules of evidence and procedure. Indeed, on the second trial the evidence pointed almost as convincingly toward another person as toward the defendant.

I have mentioned the Patterson, Thaw, and Molineux trials because they are cases commonly referred to in support of the general contention that the jury system is a failure. But I am inclined to believe that any single judge, bench of judges, or board of commissioners would have reached the same result as the juries did in these instances.

It is quite true that juries, for rather obvious reasons, are more apt to acquit in murder cases than in others. In the first place, save where the defendant obviously belongs to the vicious criminal class, a jury finds it somewhat difficult to believe, unless overwhelming motive be shown, that he could have deliberately taken another’s life. Thus, with sound reason, they give great weight to the plea of self-defence which the accused urges upon them. He is generally the only witness. His story has to be disproved by circumstantial evidence, if indeed there be any. Frequently it stands alone as the only account of the homicide. Thus murder cases are almost always weaker than others, since the chief witness has been removed by death; while at the same time the nature of the punishment leads the jury unconsciously to require a higher degree of proof than in cases where the consequences are less abhorrent. All this is quite natural and inevitable. Moreover, homicide cases as a rule are better defended than others, a fact which undoubtedly affects the result. These considerations apply to all trials for homicide, notorious or otherwise, the results of which in New York County for the past ten years are set forth in the following table:

A popular impression exists at the present time that a man convicted of murder has but to appeal his case on some technical ground in order to secure a reversal, and thus escape the consequences of his crime. How wide of the mark such a belief may be, at least so far as one locality is concerned, is shown by the fact that in New York State, from 1887 to 1907, there were 169 decisions by the Court of Appeals on appeals from convictions of murder in the first-degree, out of which there were only twenty-nine reversals. Seven of these defendants were again immediately tried and convicted, and a second time appealed, upon which occasion only two were successful, while five had their convictions promptly affirmed. Thus, so far as the ultimate triumph of justice is concerned, out of 169 cases in that period the appellants finally succeeded in twenty-two only.

Since 1902 there have been twenty-seven decisions rendered in first-degree murder cases by the Court of Appeals, with only three reversals.[4] The more important convictions throughout the State are affirmed with great regularity.

As to the conduct of such cases, the writer’s own experience is that a murder trial is the most solemn proceeding known to the law. He has prosecuted at least fifty men for murder, and convicted more than he cares to remember. Such trials are invariably dignified and deliberate so far as the conduct of the legal side of the case is concerned. No judge, however unqualified for the bench; no prosecutor, however

light-minded; no lawyer, however callous, fails to feel the serious nature of the transaction or to be affected strongly by the fact that he is dealing with life and death. A prosecutor who openly laughed or sneered at a prisoner charged with murder would severely injure his cause. The jury, naturally, are overwhelmed with the gravity of the occasion and the responsibility resting upon them.

In the Patterson, Thaw, and Molineux cases the evidence, unfortunately, dealt with unpleasant subjects and at times was revolting, but there was a quiet propriety in the way in which the witnesses were examined that rendered it as inoffensive as it could possibly be. Outside the court-room the vulgar crowd may have spat and sworn; and inside no doubt there were degenerate men and women who eagerly strained their ears to catch every item of depravity. But the throngs that filled the court-room were quiet and well ordered, and the merely curious outnumbered the morbid.

The writer deprecates the impulse which leads judges, from a feeling that justice should be publicly administered, to throw wide the doors of every court-room, irrespective of the subject-matter of the trial. We need have no fear of Star Chamber proceedings in America, and no harm would be done by excluding from the court-room all persons who have no business at a trial.

It is, of course, not unnatural that in the course of a trial occupying weeks or months the tension should occasionally be relieved by a gleam of humor. After you have been busy trying a case for a couple of weeks you go to court and set to work in much the same frame of mind in which you would attack any other business. But the fact that a small boy sometimes sees something funny at a funeral, or a bevy of giggling shop-girls may be sitting in the gallery at a fashionable wedding, argues little in respect to the solemnity or beauty of the service itself.

What are the celebrated cases—the trials that attract the attention and interest of the public? In the first place, they are the very cases which contain those elements most likely to arouse the sympathy and prejudices of a jury—where a girl has taken the life of her supposed seducer, or a husband has avenged his wife’s alleged dishonor. Such cases arouse the public imagination for the very reason that every man realizes that there are two sides to every genuine tragedy of this character—the legal and the natural. Thus, aside from any other consideration, they are the obvious instances where justice is most likely to go astray.

In the next place, the defence is usually in the hands of counsel of adroitness and ability; for even if the prisoner has no money to pay his lawyer, the latter is willing to take the case for the advertising he will get out of it.

Third, a trial which lasts for a long time naturally results in creating in the jury’s mind an exaggerated idea of the prisoner’s rights, namely, the presumption of innocence and the benefit of the reasonable doubt. For every time that the jury will hear these phrases once in a petty larceny or forgery case, they will hear them in a big murder trial a hundred times. They see the defendant day after day, and the relation becomes more personal. Their responsibility seems greater toward him than toward the defendant in petty cases.

Last, as previously suggested, murder cases are apt to be inherently weaker than others, and more often depend upon circumstantial evidence.

The results of such cases are therefore but a poor test of the efficiency of a jury system. They are, in fact, the precise cases where, if at all, the jury might be expected to go wrong.

But juries would go astray far less frequently even in such trials were it not for that most vicious factor in the administration of criminal justice—the “yellow” journal. For the impression that public trials are the scenes of coarse buffoonery and brutality is due to the manner in which these trials are exploited by the sensational papers.

The instant that a sensational homicide occurs, the aim of the editors of these papers is—not to see that a swift and sure retribution is visited upon the guilty, or that a prompt and unqualified vindication is accorded to the innocent, but, on the contrary, so to handle the matter that as many highly colored “stories” as possible can be run about it.

Thus, where the case is perfectly clear against the prisoner, the “yellow” press seeks to bolster up the defence and really to justify the killing by a thinly disguised appeal to the readers’ passions. Not infrequently, while the editorial page is mourning the prevalence of homicide, the front columns are bristling with sensational accounts of the home-coming of the injured husband, the heart-breaking confession of the weak and erring wife, and the sneering nonchalance of the seducer, until a public sentiment is created which, if it outwardly deprecates the invocation of the unwritten law, secretly avows that it would have done the same thing in the prisoner’s place.

This antecedent public sentiment is fostered from day to day until it has unconsciously permeated every corner of the community. The juryman will swear that he is unaffected by what he has read, but unknown to himself there are already tiny furrows in his brain along which the appeal of the defence will run.

In view of this deliberate perversion of truth and morals, the euphemisms of a hard-put defendant’s counsel when he pictures a chorus girl as an angel and a coarse bounder as a St. George seem innocent indeed. It is not within the rail of the court-room but within the pages of these sensational journals that justice is made a farce. The phrase “contempt of court” has ceased practically to have any significance whatever. The front pages teem with caricatures of the judge upon the bench, of the individual jurors with exaggerated heads upon impossible bodies, of the lawyers ranting and bellowing, juxtaposed with sketches of the defendant praying beside his prison cot or firing the fatal shot in obedience to a message borne by an angel from on high.

How long would the “unwritten law” play any part in the administration of criminal justice if every paper in the land united in demanding, not only in its editorials, but upon its front pages, that private vengeance must cease? Let the “yellow” newspapers confine themselves simply to an accurate report of the evidence at the trial, with a reiterated insistence that the law must take its course. Let them stop pandering to those morbid tastes which they have themselves created. Let the “Sympathy Sisters,” the photographer, and the special artist be excluded from the court-room. When these things are done, we shall have the same high standard of efficiency upon the part of the jury in great murder trials that we have in other cases.

CRIMINALS

CHAPTER IV
WHY DO MEN KILL?

When a shrewd but genial editor called me up on the telephone and asked me how I should like to write an article (a “story,” he called it) on the above lurid title, I laughed in his—I mean the telephone’s face.

“My dear fellow!” I said (I should only have the nerve to call him that over a wire). “My dear fellow! It would ruin me! How could I keep my self-respect and write that kind of sensational stuff—me, a reputable, conservative, dry-as-dust member of the bar! Go to! Why do men kill? Ha-ha! Why do men eat? Why do men drink? Why do men love? Why do men——”

“Yes,” came back his somewhat cynical voice “Why?”

“How do I know?” I answered, still trying to be jocular. “I never killed anybody!”

“Eh?” said he.

I paused.

“Well,” I admitted, “never actually with my own hand, old chap! I have—taken part—so to speak—in—er—proceedings that ultimately resulted in the death of certain human beings—in a perfectly legal way, but I’m not sure that I entirely approved of it. Duty, you know! Salary—I had a growing family.”

“Look here!” he interrupted. “I want that story. I want to know something. I do! I want to know why one man kills another man. If we knew why, maybe we could stop it, couldn’t we? We could try to, anyhow. And you know something about it. You’ve prosecuted nearly a hundred men for murder. Get the facts—that’s what I want. Cut the adjectives and morality, and get down to the reasons. Anything particularly undignified about that?”

“N—o,” I began, taking a fresh start.

“All right,” he replied crisply. “Send it up for January.” And he rang off.

I arose and walked over to the bookcase on which reposed several shelves of “minutes” of criminal trials. They were dusty and depressing. Practically every one of them was a memento of some poor devil gone to prison or to the chair. Where were they now—and why did they kill—yes, why did they?

I glanced along the red-labeled backs.

“People versus Candido.” Now why did he kill? I remembered the Italian perfectly. He killed his friend because the latter had been too attentive to his wife. “People versus Higgins.” Why did he? That was a drunken row on a New Year’s Eve within the sound of Trinity chimes. “People versus Sterling Greene.” Yes, he was a colored man—I recalled the evidence—drink and a “yellow gal.” “People versus Mock Duck”—a Chinese feud between the On Leong Tong and the Hip Sing Tong—a vendetta, first one Chink shot and then another, turn and turn about, running back through Mott Street, New York, Boston, San Francisco, until the origin of the quarrel was lost in the dim Celestial mists across the sea. Out of the first four cases the following motives: Jealousy—1. Drink—1. Drink and jealousy—1. Scattering (how can you term a “Tong” row?)—1.

I began to get interested. Supposing I dug out all the homicide cases I had ever tried, what would the result show as to motive for the killing? Would drink and women account for seventy-five per cent? Mentally I ran my eye back over nearly ten years. What other motives had the defendants at the bar had? There was Laudiero—an Italian “Camorrista”—he had killed simply for the distinction it gave him among his countrymen and the satisfaction he felt at being known as a “bad” man—a “capo maestra.” There was Joseph Ferrone—pure jealousy again. Hendry—animal hate intensified by drink. Yoscow—a deliberate murder, planned in advance by several of a gang, to get rid of a young bully who had made himself generally unpleasant. There was Childs, who had killed, as he claimed, in self-defence because he was set upon and assaulted by rival runners from another seaman’s boarding house. Really it began to look as if men killed for a lot of reasons. I wanted to call up my friend and ask what kind of killings counted. Did he simply want to know why men murdered one another? He couldn’t possibly mean that I was to attempt to explain why they saw fit to exterminate each other by means of capital punishment? Or ran over one another in trains and automobiles? Or allowed each other to die from unsanitary conditions? Or lynched one another?—there was only one reason for that I knew. Or killed themselves? Nor did he mean to have me go into the question of why they killed elsewhere—in Naples, Sicily, Constantinople, and so on. No; what he wanted to find out was why men in the United States of America killed other men of their own kind without malice aforethought—legal and quasi-legal killings excluded. Moreover, he wanted to know from the actual personal experience of those who had weighed the evidence as to their motives in a sufficiently large number of cases to be representative.

One consideration at once suggested itself. How about the killings where the murderer is never caught? The prisoners tried for murder are only a mere fraction of those who commit murder. True, and the more deliberate the murder, the greater, unfortunately, the chance of the villain getting away. Still, in cases merely of suspected murder, or in cases where no evidence is taken, it would be manifestly unfair arbitrarily to assign motives for the deed, if deed it was. No, one must start with the assumption, sufficiently accurate under all the circumstances, that the killings in which the killer is caught are fairly representative of killings as a whole.

All crimes naturally tend to divide themselves into two classes—crimes against property and crimes against the person, each class having an entirely different assortment of reasons for their commission.

There can be practically but one motive for theft, burglary, or robbery. It is, of course, conceivable that such crimes might be perpetrated for revenge—to deprive the victim of some highly prized possession. But in the main there is only one object—unlawful gain. So, too, blackmail, extortion, and kidnapping are all the products of the desire for “easy money.” But, unquestionably, this is the reason for murder in comparatively few cases.

The usual motive for crimes against the person—assault, manslaughter, mayhem, murder, etc.—is the desire to punish, or be avenged upon another by inflicting personal pain upon him or by depriving him of his most valuable asset—life. And this desire for retaliation or revenge generally grows out of a recent humiliation received at the hands of the other person, a real or fancied wrong to oneself, a member of one’s family, or one’s property. But this was too easy an answer to my friend’s question. He could have got that much out of any elementary text-book on penology. He wanted and deserved more than that, and I set out to give it to him.

My first inquiry was in the direction of original sources. I sought out the man in the district attorney’s office who had had the widest general experience and put the question to him. This was Mr. Charles C. Nott, Jr., who has been trying murder cases for nearly ten years. It so happened that he had kept a complete record of all of them and this he courteously placed at my disposal. The list contains sixty-two cases, and the defendants were of divers races. These homicides included seventeen committed in cold blood (about twenty-five per cent, an extraordinary percentage) from varying motives, as follows: One defendant (white) murdered his colored mistress simply to get rid of her; another killed out of revenge because the deceased had “licked” him several times before; another, having quarrelled with his friend over a glass of soda water, later on returned and precipitated a quarrel by striking him, in the course of which he killed him; another because the deceased had induced his wife to desert him; another lay in wait for his victim and killed him without the motive ever being ascertained; one man killed his brother to get a sum of money, and another because his brother would not give him money; another because he believed the deceased had betrayed the Armenian cause to the Turks; another because he wished to get the deceased out of the way in order to marry his wife; and another because deceased had knocked him down the day before. One man had killed a girl who had ridiculed him; and one a girl who had refused to marry him; another had killed his daughter because she could no longer live in the house with him; one, an informer, had been the victim of a Black Hand vendetta; and the last had poisoned his wife for the insurance money in order to go off with another woman. There were two cases of infanticide, one in which a woman threw her baby into the lake in Central Park, and another in which she gave her baby poison. Besides these murders, five homicides had been committed in the course of perpetrating other crimes, including burglary and robbery.

Passing over three cases of culpable negligence resulting in death, we come to thirty-seven homicides during quarrels, some of which might have been technically classified as murders, but which, being committed “in the heat of passion,” in practically every instance resulted in a verdict of manslaughter. The quarrels often arose over the most trifling matters. One was a dispute over a broom, another over a horse blanket, another over food, another over a twenty-five-cent bet in a pool game, another over a loan of fifty cents, another over ten cents in a crap game, and still another over one dollar and thirty cents in a crap game. Five men were killed in drunken rows which had no immediate cause except the desire to “start something.” One man killed another because he had not prevented the theft of some lumber, one (a policeman) because the deceased would not “move on” when ordered, one because a bartender refused to serve him with any more drinks, and one (a bartender) because the deceased insisted that he should serve more drinks. One man was killed in a quarrel over politics, one in a fuss over some beer, one in a card game, one trying to rob a fruit-stand, one in a dispute with a ship’s officer, one in a dance hall row. One man killed another whom he found with his wife, and one wife killed her husband for a similar cause; another wife killed her husband simply because she “could not stand him,” and one because he was fighting with their son. One man was killed by another who was trying to collect from him a debt of six hundred dollars. One quarrel resulting in homicide arose because the defendant had pointed out deceased to the police, another because the participants called each other names, and another arose out of an alleged seduction. Three homicides grew out of street rows originating in various ways. One man killed another who was fighting with a friend of the first, a janitor was killed in a “continuous row” which had been going on for a long time, and one homicide was committed for “nothing in particular.”

This astonishing olla podrida of reasons for depriving men of their lives leaves one stunned and confused. Is it possible to deduce any order out of such homicidal chaos? Still, an attempt to classify such diverse causes enables one to reach certain general conclusions. Out of the sixty-two homicides there were seventeen cold-blooded murders, with deliberation and premeditation (in such cases the reasons for the killing are by comparison unimportant); three homicides due to negligence, five committed while perpetrating a felony; thirty-seven manslaughters, due in sixteen cases to quarrels (simply), thirteen to drink, four to disputes over money, three to women, one to race antagonism.

Reclassifying the seventeen murders according to causes, we have: Six due to women, four to quarrels, five to other causes, and two infanticides. Added to the manslaughters previously classified, we have a total of sixty-two killings, due in twenty cases to quarrels, thirteen to drink, nine to women, four to disputes over money, one to race antagonism, five to general causes, three to negligence, two infanticides, five during the commission of other crimes.

The significant features of this analysis are that about seventy-five per cent of the killings were due to quarrels over small sums or other matters, drink and women; over fifty per cent to drink and petty quarrels, and about thirty per cent to quarrels simply. The trifling character of the causes of the quarrels themselves is shown by the fact that in three of these particular cases, tried in a single week, the total amount involved in the disputes was only eighty-five cents. That is about twenty-eight and one-half cents a life. Many a murder in a barroom grows out of an argument over whether a glass of beer has, or has not, been paid for, or whose turn it is to treat; and more than one man has been killed in New York City because he was too clumsy to avoid stepping on somebody’s feet or bumping into another man on the sidewalk.

The writer sincerely regrets that his own lack of initiative prevented his keeping a diary similar to that of his colleague, Mr. Nott, during his seven years’ service as a prosecutor. It is now impossible for him to refresh his memory as to the causes of all the various homicides which he prosecuted, but where he can do so the evidence points to a conclusion similar to that deduced from Mr. Nott’s record. The proximate causes were trifling—the underlying cause was the lack of civilization of the defendant—his brutality and absence of self-control.

With a view to ascertaining conditions in general throughout the United States, I asked a clipping agency to send me the first one hundred notices of actual homicides which should come under its scissors. The immediate result of this experiment was that I received forty-five notices supposedly relating to murders and homicides, which on closer examination proved to be anything but what I wanted for the purpose in view. With only one or two exceptions they related not to deaths from violence reported as having occurred on any particular day, but to notices of convictions, acquittals, indictments, pleas of guilty and not guilty, rewards offered, sentences, executions, “suspicions” of the police, “mysteries revived,” and even editorials on capital punishment.

A letter of protest brought in due course, but much more slowly, one hundred and seven clippings, which yielded the following reasons why men killed: There were four suicides, three lynchings, one infanticide, three murders while resisting arrest, three criminals killed while resisting arrest, two men killed in riots, eight murders in the course of committing burglaries and robberies, seven persons killed in vendettas, three race murders, and twenty-four killed in quarrels over petty causes; there were twelve murders from jealousy, followed in four instances by suicide on the part of the murderer; six killings justifiable on the “higher law” theory only, but involving great provocation, and thirty deliberate slaughters. The last clipping recounted how an irate husband pounded a “masher” so hard that he died. Leaving out the suicides and those killed while resisting arrest, there remain one hundred persons murdered, not only by persons insane or wild from the effects of liquor, but by robbers and burglars, brutes, bullies, and thugs, husbands, wives, and lovers, and by a vast number of people who not only destroyed their enemies in the fury of anger, but in many instances openly went out gunning for them, lay in wait for them in the dark, or hacked off their heads with hatchets while they slept.

It is, indeed, a sanguinary record, from which little consolation is to be derived, and the only comfort is the probability that the accounts of the first one hundred murders anywhere in Europe would undoubtedly be just as blood-curdling. I had simply asked the clipping bureau to send me one hundred horrors and I had got them. They did not indicate anything at all so far as the ratio of homicide to population was concerned or as to the blood-thirstiness of Americans in general. They merely showed what despicable things murders were.

As to the reasons for the killings, they were as diverse as those which Mr. Nott had prosecuted, save that there were more of an ultra blood-thirsty character, due probably to the fact that the young lady who did the clipping wanted (after one rebuff) to make sure that I was satisfied with the goods she sent me. And this suggests a reason for the large percentage of cold-blooded killings prosecuted by my friend—namely, that Mr. Nott being the most astute prosecutor available, the district attorney, whenever the latter had a particularly atrocious case, sent it to him in order that the defendant might surely get his full deserts.

The reasons for these homicides were of every sort; police officers and citizens were shot and killed by criminals trying to make “get-aways,” and by negroes and others “running amuck”; despondent young men shot their unresponsive sweethearts and then either blew out their own brains or pretended to try to do so; two stable-men had a duel with revolvers, and each killed the other; several men were shot for being too attentive to young women residing in the same hotels; an Italian, whose wife had left him and gone to her mother, went to the house and killed her, her sister, her sister’s husband, his mother-in-law, two children, and finally himself; the “Gopher Gang” started a riot at a “benefit” dance given to a widow and killed a man, after which they fled to the woods and fired from cover upon the police until eighteen were overpowered and arrested; a young girl and her fiancé, sitting in the parlor, planning their honeymoon, were unexpectedly interrupted by a rejected suitor of the girl’s, who shot and killed both of them; an Italian who peeked into a bedroom, just for fun, afterward rushed in and cut off two persons’ heads with an ax—one of them was his wife; a gang of white ruffians shot and then burned a negro family of three peacefully working in the fields; a man who went to the front door to see who had tapped on his window was shot through the heart; a striker was killed by a twenty-five-pound piece of flagging thrown from a roof; there was a gun fight of colored men at Madison, Wisconsin, at which three were shot; a gang of negro ruffians killed and mutilated a white woman (with a baby in her arms) and her husband; masked robbers called a man to his barn at Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and cut his throat; an Italian was found with his head split in two by a butcher’s cleaver; a negress in Lafayette, Louisiana, killed a family of six with a hatchet; a negro farmer and his two daughters were lynched and their bodies burned by four white men (who will probably also be lynched if caught); a girl of eleven shot her girl friend of about the same age and killed her; several persons were found stabbed to death; a plumber killed his brother (also a plumber) for saying that he stole two dollars; a murderer was shot by a posse of militia in a cornfield; a card game at Bayonne, New Jersey, resulted in a revolver fight on the street in which one of the players was killed; bank robbers killed a cashier at twelve o’clock noon; a jealous lover in Butte, Montana, shot and killed his sweetheart, her father, and mother; a deputy sheriff was murdered; burglars killed several persons in the course of their business; Kokolosski, a Pole, kicked his child to death; and a couple of dozen people were incidentally shot, stabbed, or otherwise disposed of in the course of quarrels over the most trivial matters. In almost no case was there what an intelligent, civilized man would regard as an adequate reason for the homicide. They killed because they felt like killing, and yielded to the impulse, whatever its immediate origin.

This conclusion is abundantly supported by the figures of the Chicago Tribune for the seven years ending in 1900, when carefully analyzed. During this period 62,812 homicides were recorded. Of these there were 17,120, of which the causes were unknown and 3,204 committed while making a justifiable arrest, in self-defence, or by the insane, so that there were in fact only 42,488 felonious homicides the causes of which can be definitely alleged. The ratio of the “quarrels” to this net total is about seventy-five per cent. There were, in addition, 2,848 homicides due to liquor—that is, without cause. Thus eighty per cent of all the murders and manslaughters in the United States for a period of seven years were for no reason at all or from mere anger or habit, arising out of causes often of the most trifling character.

Nor are the conclusions changed by the figures of the years between 1904 and 1909.

During this period 61,786 homicides were recorded. Of these there were 9,302 of which the causes were not known, and 2,480 committed while making a justifiable arrest, in self-defence, or by the insane, leaving 50,004 cases of felonious homicides of known causes. Of these homicides, 33,476 were due to quarrels and 4,799 to liquor, a total of 38,275 out of the 50,004 cases of known causes being traceable in this, another seven years, to motives the most casual.

It would be stupid to allege that the reason men killed was because they had been stepped on or had been deprived of a glass of beer. The cause lies deeper than that. It rests in the willingness or desire of the murderer to kill at all. Among barbaric or savage peoples this is natural; but among civilized nations it is hardly to be anticipated. If the negro who shoots his fellow because he believes himself to have been cheated out of ten cents were really civilized, he would either not have the impulse to kill or, having the impulse to kill, would have sufficient power of self-control to refrain from doing so. This power of self-control may be natural or acquired, and it may or may not be possessed by the man who feels a desire to commit a homicide. The fact to be observed—the interesting and, broadly speaking, the astonishing fact—is that among a people like ourselves anybody should have a desire to kill. It is even more astonishing than that the impulse should be yielded to so often if it comes.

This, then, is the real reason why men kill—because it is inherent in their state of mind, it is part of their mental and physical make-up—they are ready to kill, they want to kill, they are the kind of men who do kill. This is the result of their heredity, environment, educational and religious training, or the absence of it. How many readers of this paper have ever experienced an actual desire to kill another human being? Probably not one hundredth of one per cent. They belong to the class of people who either never have such an impulse, or at any rate have been taught to keep such impulses under control. Hence it is futile to try to explain that some men kill for a trifling sum of money, some because they feel insulted, others because of political or labor disputes, or because they do not like their food. Any one of these may be the match that sets off the gunpowder, but the real cause of the killing is the fact that the gunpowder is there, lying around loose, and ready to be touched off. What engenders this gunpowder state of mind would make a valuable sociological study, but it may well be that a seemingly inconsequential fact may so embitter a boy or man toward life or the human race in general that in time he “sees red” and goes through the world looking for trouble. Any cause that makes for crime and depravity makes for murder as well. The little boy who is driven out of the tenement onto the street, and in turn off the street by a policeman, until, finding no wholesome place to play, he joins a “gang” and begins an incipient career of crime, may end in the “death house.”

The table on the opposite page gives the figures collected by the Chicago Tribune for the years from 1881 to 1910.

In view of the foregoing it may seem paradoxical for the writer to state that he questions the alleged unusual tendency to commit murder on the part of citizens of the United States. Yet of one fact he is absolutely convinced—namely, that homicide has substantially decreased in the last fifteen years. Even according to the figures collected by the Chicago Tribune, there were but 8,975 homicides in 1910 as compared with 10,500 in 1895, and 10,652 in 1896.

Number of Murders and Homicides in the United States Each
Year Since 1881, Compared with the Population

Meantime the population of our country has been leaping onward.

We are blood-thirsty enough, God knows, without making things out any worse than they are or juggling the figures. Our murder rate per 100,000 unquestionably exceeds that of most of the countries of western Europe, but, as the saying is, “there’s a reason.” If our homicide statistics related only to the white population of even the second generation born in this country we should find, I am convinced, that we are no more homicidal than France and Belgium, and less so than Italy. It is to be expected that with our Chinese, “greaser,” and half-breed population in the West, our Black Belt in the South, and our Sicilian and South Italian immigration in the North and East, our murder rate should exceed those of the continental nations, which are nothing if not well policed.

But of one thing we can be abundantly certain without any figures at all, and that is that our present method of administering justice (less the actions of juries than of judges)—the system taken as a whole—offers no deterrent to the embryonic or professional criminal. The administration of justice to-day is not the swift judgment of honest men upon a criminal act, but a clever game between judge and lawyer, in which the action of the jury is discounted entirely and the moves are made with a view to checkmating justice, not in the trial court-room, but before the appellate tribunal two or three years later.

“My young feller,” said a grizzled veteran of the criminal bar to me long years ago, after our jury had gone out, “there’s lots of things in this game you ain’t got on to yet. Do you think I care what this jury does? Not one mite. I got a nice little error into the case the very first day—and I’ve set back ever since. S’pose we are convicted? I’ll get Jim here [the prisoner] out on a certificate and it’ll be two years before the Court of Appeals will get around to the case. Meantime Jim’ll be out makin’ money to pay me my fee—won’t you, Jim? Then your witnesses will be gone, and nobody’ll remember what on earth it’s all about. You’ll be down in Wall Street practicing real law yourself, and the indictment will kick around the office for a year or so, all covered with dust, and then some day I’ll get a friend of mine to come in quietly and move to dismiss. And it’ll be dismissed. Don’t you worry! Why, a thousand other murders will have been committed in this county by the time that happens. Bless your soul! You can’t go on tryin’ the same man forever! Give the other fellers a chance. You shake your head? Well, it’s a fact. I’ve been doin’ it for forty years. You’ll see.” And I did. That may not be Why men kill, but perhaps indirectly it may have something to do with it.

CHAPTER V
DETECTIVES AND OTHERS

A detective, according to the dictionaries, is one “whose occupation it is to discover matters as to which information is desired, particularly wrong-doers, and to obtain evidence to be used against them.” A private detective, by the same authority, is one “engaged unofficially in obtaining secret information for or guarding the private interests of those who employ him.” The definition emphasizes the official character of detectives in general as contrasted with those whose services may be enlisted for hire by the individual citizen, but the distinction is of little importance, since it is based arbitrarily upon the character of the employer (whether the State or a private client) instead of upon the nature of the employment itself, which is the only thing which is likely to interest us about detectives at all.

The sanctified tradition that a detective was an agile person with a variety of side-whiskers no longer obtains even in light literature, and the most imaginative of us is frankly aware of the fact that a detective is just a common man earning (or pretending to earn) a common living by common and obvious means. Yet in spite of ourselves we are accustomed to attribute superhuman acuteness and a lightning-like rapidity of intellect to this vague and romantic class of fellow-citizens. The ordinary work of a detective, however, requires neither of these qualities. Honesty and obedience are his chief requirements, and if he have intelligence as well, so much the better, provided it be of the variety known as horse sense. A genuine candidate for the job of Sherlock Holmes would find little competition. In the first place, the usual work of a detective does not demand any extraordinary powers of deduction at all.

Leaving out of consideration those who are merely private policemen (often in uniform), and principally engaged in patrolling residential streets, preserving order at fairs, race-tracks, and political meetings, or in breaking strikes and preventing riots, the largest part of the work for which detectives are employed is not in the detection of crime and criminals, but in simply watching people, following them, and reporting as accurately as possible their movements. These functions are known in the vernacular as spotting, locating, and trailing. It requires patience, some powers of observation, and occasionally a little ingenuity. The real detective under such circumstances is the man to whom they hand in their reports. Yet much of the most dramatic and valuable work that is done involves no acuteness at all, but simply a willingness to act as a spy and to brave the dangers of being found out.

There is nothing more thrilling in the pages of modern history than the story of the man (James McPartland) who uncovered the conspiracies of the Molly McGuires. But the work of this man was that of a spy pure and simple.

Another highly specialized class of detectives is that engaged in police and banking work, who by experience (or even origin) have a wide and intimate acquaintance with criminals of various sorts, and by their familiarity with the latter’s whereabouts, associates, work, and methods are able to recognize and run down the perpetrators of particular crimes.

Thus, for example, there are men in the detective bureau of New York City who know by name, and perhaps have a speaking acquaintance with, a large number of the pick-pockets and burglars of the East Side. They know their haunts and their ties of friendship or marriage. When any particular job is pulled off they have a pretty shrewd idea of who is responsible for it and lay their plans accordingly. If necessary, they run in the whole bunch and put each of them through a course of interrogation, accusation, and brow-beating until some one breaks down or makes a slip that involves him in a tangle. These men are special policemen whose knowledge makes them detectives by courtesy. But their work does not involve any particular superiority or quickness of intellect—the quality which we are wont to associate with the detection of crime.

Now, if the ordinary householder finds that his wife’s necklace has mysteriously disappeared, his first impulse is to send for a detective of some sort or other. In general, he might just as well send for his mother-in-law. Of course, the police can and will watch the pawnshops for the missing baubles, but no crook who is not a fool is going to pawn a whole necklace on the Bowery the very next day after it has been “lifted.” Or he can enlist a private detective who will question the servants and perhaps go through their trunks, if they will let him. Either sort will probably line up the inmates of the house for general scrutiny and try to bully them separately into a confession. This may save the master a disagreeable experience, but it is the simplest sort of police work and is done vicariously for the taxpayer, just as the public garbage man relieves you from the burden of taking out the ashes yourself, because he is paid for it, not on account of your own incapacity or his superiority. Which, speaking of garbage, reminds the writer of a disconnected personal experience in which he endeavored to enlist the services of one of these latter specialists for the purpose of carrying a trunk on his wagon to the steamboat wharf.

“I’m sorry, sir,” replied the gentleman in question, “I ain’t used to handling trunks. They ain’t in my line. But [proudly] when it comes to swill, I’m as good as anybody!”

The real detective is the one who, taking up the solution of a crime or other mystery, brings to bear upon it unusual powers of observation and deduction and an exceptional resourcefulness in acting upon his conclusions. Frankly, I have known very few such, although for some ten years I have made use of a large number of so-called detectives in both public and private matters. As I recall the long line of cases where these men have rendered service of great value, almost every one resolves itself into a successful piece of mere spying or trailing. Little ingenuity or powers of reason were required. Of course, there are a thousand tricks that an experienced man acquires as a matter of course, but which at first sight seem almost like inspiration. I shall not forget my delight when Jesse Blocher, who had been trailing Charles Foster Dodge through the South (when the latter was wanted as the chief witness against Abe Hummel on the charge of subornation of perjury of which he was finally convicted), told me how he instantly located his man, without disclosing his own identity, by unostentatiously leaving a note addressed to Dodge in a bright-red envelope upon the office counter of the Hotel St. Charles in New Orleans, where he knew his quarry to be staying. A few moments later the clerk saw it, picked it up, and, as a matter of course, thrust it promptly into box No. 420, thus involuntarily hanging, as it were, a red lantern on Dodge’s door.

There is no more reason to look for superiority of intelligence or mental alertness among detectives of the ordinary class than there is to expect it from clerks, stationary engineers, plumbers, or firemen. While comparisons are invidious, I should be inclined to say that the ordinary chauffeur was probably a brighter man than the average detective. This is not to be taken in derogation of the latter, but as a compliment to the former. There is more reason why he should be. There are a great many detectives of ambiguous training. I remember in a celebrated case discovering that of the more important detectives employed by a well-known private Anti-Criminal Society in New York, one had been a street vender of frankfurters (otherwise yclept “hot dogs”), and another the keeper of a bird store, which last perhaps qualified him for the pursuit and capture of human game. There is a popular fiction that lawyers are shrewd and capable, similar to the prevailing one that detectives are astute and cunning in their methods. But, as the head of one of the biggest agencies in the country remarked to me the other day, when discussing the desirability of retaining local counsel in a distant city: “By thunder! You know how hard it is to find a lawyer that isn’t a dead one.” I feel confident that he did not mean this in the sense that there was no good lawyer except a dead lawyer. What my detective friend probably had in mind was that it was difficult to find a lawyer who brought to bear on a new problem any originality of thought or action. It is even harder to find a detective who is not in this sense a dead one. I have the feeling, being a lawyer myself, that (for educational reasons probably) it is harder to find a live detective than a live lawyer. There are a few of both, however, if you know where to look for them. But it is easy to fall into the hands of the Philistines.

The fundamental reason why it is so hard to form any just opinion of detectives in general is that (except by their fruits) there is little opportunity to discriminate between the able and the incapable. Now, the more difficult and complicated his task the less likely is the sleuth (honest or otherwise) to succeed. The chances are a good deal more than even that he will never solve the mystery for which he is engaged. Thus at the end of three months you will have only his reports and his bill—which are poor comfort, to say the least. And yet he may have really worked eighteen hours per day in your service. But a dishonest detective has only to disappear (and take his ease for the same period) and send you his reports and his bill—and you will have only his word for how much work he has done and how much money he has spent. You are absolutely in his power—unless you hire another detective to watch him. Consequently there is no class in the world where the temptation to dishonesty is greater than among detectives—not even among plumbers, cabmen, butchers, and lawyers. (God knows the peril of all of these!) This, too, is, I fancy, the reason that the evidence of the police detective is received with so much suspicion by jurymen—they know that the only way for him to retain his position is by making a record and getting convictions, and hence they are always looking for jobs and frame-ups. If a police detective doesn’t make arrests and send a man to jail every once in a while there is no conclusive way for his superiors to be sure he isn’t loafing.

There are a very large number of persons who go into the detective business for the same reason that others enter the ministry—they can’t make a living at anything else. Provided he has squint eyes and a dark complexion, almost anybody feels that he is qualified to unravel the tangled threads of crime. The first resource of the superannuated or discharged police detective is to start an agency. Of course, he may be first class in spite of these disqualifications, but the presumption in the first instance is that he is no longer alert or effective, and in the second that in one way or another he is not honest. Agencies recruited from deposed and other ex-policemen usually have all the faults of the police without any of their virtues. There are many small agencies which do reliable work, and there are a number of private detectives in all the big cities who work single-handed and achieve excellent results. However, if he expects to accomplish anything by hiring detectives, the layman or lawyer must first make sure of his agency or his man.

One other feature of the detective business should not be overlooked. In addition to charging for services not actually rendered and expenses not actually incurred, there is in many cases a strong temptation to betray the interests of the employer. A private detective may, and usually does, become possessed of information even more valuable to the person who is being watched than to the person to whom he owes his allegiance. Unreliable rascals constantly sell out to the other side and play both ends against the middle. In this they resemble some of the famous diplomatic agents of history. And police detectives employed to run down criminals and protect society have been known instead to act as stalls for bank burglars and (for a consideration) to assist them to dispose of their booty and protect them from arrest and capture. It has repeatedly happened that reliable private detectives have discovered that the police employed upon the same case have in reality been tipping off the criminals as to what was being done and coaching them as to their conduct. Of course the natural jealousy existing between official and unofficial agents of the law leads to a good many unfounded accusations of this character, but, on the other hand, the fact that much of the most effective police work is done by employing professional criminals to secure information and act as stool-pigeons often results in a definite understanding that the latter shall be themselves protected in the quiet enjoyment of their labors. The relations of the regular police to crime, however, and the general subject of police graft have little place in a chapter of this character.

The first question that usually arises is whether a detective shall or shall not be employed at all in any particular case. Usually the most important thing is to find out what the real character, past, and associations of some particular individual may be. Well-established detective agencies with offices throughout the country are naturally in a better position to acquire such information quickly than the private individual or lawyer, since they are on the spot and have an organized staff containing the right sort of men for the work. If the information lies in your own city you can probably hire some one to get it or ferret it out yourself quite as well, and much more cheaply, than by employing their services. The leads are few and generally simple. The subject’s past employers and business associates, his landlords and landladies, his friends and enemies, and his milkman must be run down and interrogated. Perhaps his personal movements must be watched. Any intelligent fellow who is out of a job will do this for you for about $5 per day and expenses. The agencies usually charge from $6 to $8 (and up), and prefer two men to one, as a matter of convenience and to make sure that the subject is fully covered. If the suspect is on the move and trains or steamships must be met, you have practically no choice but to employ a national agency. It alone has the proper plant and equipment for the work. In an emergency, organization counts more than anything else. Where time is of the essence, the individual has no opportunity to hire his own men or start an organization of his own. But if the matter is one where there is plenty of leisure to act, you can usually do your own detective work better and cheaper than any one else.

Regarding the work of the detective as a spy (which probably constitutes seventy-five per cent of his employment to-day), few persons realize how widely such services are being utilized. The insignificant old Irishwoman who stumbles against you in the department store is possibly watching with her cloudy but eagle eye for shoplifters. The tired-looking man on the street-car may, in fact, be a professional “spotter.” The stout youth with the pince-nez who is examining the wedding presents is perhaps a central-office man. All this you know or may suspect. But you are not so likely to be aware that the floor-walker himself is the agent of a rival concern placed in the department store to keep track, not only of prices but of whether or not the wholesalers are living up to their agreements in regard to the furnishing of particular kinds of goods only to one house; or that the conductor on the car is a paid detective of the company, whose principal duty is not to collect fares, but to report the doings of the unions; or that the gentleman who is accidentally introduced to you at the wedding breakfast is employed by a board of directors to get a line on your host’s business associates and social companions.

In the great struggle between capital and labor, each side has expended large sums of money in employing confederates to secure secret information as to the plans and doings of the enemy. Almost every labor union has its Judas, and many a secretary to a capitalist is in the secret employment of a labor union. The railroads must be kept informed of what is going on, and, if necessary, they import a man from another part of the country to join the local organization. Often such men, on account of their force and intelligence, are elected to high office in the brotherhoods whose secrets they are hired to betray. Practically every big manufacturing plant in the United States has on its pay-rolls men acting as engineers, foremen, or laborers who are drawing from $80 to $100 per month as detectives either (1) to keep their employers informed as to the workings of the labor unions, (2) to report to the directors the actual conduct of the business by its salaried officers, superintendents, and overseers, or (3) to ascertain and report to outside competing concerns the methods and processes made use of, the materials utilized, and the exact cost of production.

There are detectives among the chambermaids and bellboys in the hotels, and also among the guests; there are detectives on the passenger lists and in the cardrooms of the Atlantic liners; the colored porter on the private car, the butler at your friend’s house, the chorus girl on Broadway, the clerk in the law office, the employee in the commercial agency, may all be drawing pay in the interest of some one else, who may be either a transportation company, a stock-broker, a rival financier, a yellow newspaper, an injured or even an erring wife, a grievance committee, or a competing concern; and the duties of these persons may and will range from the theft of mailing-lists, books, and papers, and (in the case of the newspaper) of private letters, up to genuine detective work requiring some real ability.

Apart from the hired thieves above referred to, some yellow journals employ men to work upon the various “mystery stories” that from time to time arouse the attention of the public, who often accomplish as good results as the police. I should, however, place one limitation upon this general statement, which is that, as the object of the newspaper is usually quite as much to keep the story alive as to solve the mystery, the papers are apt to find startling significance in details of slight importance. While we are speaking of newspapers, it may not be out of place to suggest that their activity is such that there are few general evils left undisclosed and few prominent men the privacy of whose lives is not known in the editorial rooms. When lurid tales are told of the secret doings of Mr. So-and-So and the Hon. This and That, you may rest assured that the greater the desirability of those yarns as copy for the big dailies, the less likely they are to have any foundation in fact. The eye of the city editor is in every place discerning the evil if not the good. Indeed, it is almost unnecessary for the papers to hire spies, since self-constituted ones are ready at any moment to bargain with them for stolen goods and ruined reputations.

Detective work of the sort which involves the betrayal of confidences and friendships naturally excites our aversion—yet in many cases the end undoubtedly justifies the means employed, and often there is no other way to avert disaster and prevent fiendish crimes. Sometimes, on the other hand, the information sought is purely for mercenary or even less worthy reasons, and those engaged in these undertakings range from rascals of the lowest type to men who are ready to risk death for the cause which they represent and who are really heroes of a high order. One of the latter with whom I happened to be thrown professionally was a young fellow of about twenty named Guthrie.

It was during a great strike, and outrages were being committed all over the city of New York by dynamiters supposed to be in the employ of the unions. Young Guthrie, who was a reckless dare-devil, offered his services to the employers, and agreed (for a trifling compensation) to join one of the local unions and try to find out who were the men blowing up office buildings in process of construction and otherwise terrorizing the inhabitants of the city. The story of his success deserves a chapter by itself, and it is enough here to state that he applied for membership in the organization, and by giving evidence of his courage and fiber managed to secure a place as a volunteer in the dynamiting squad. So cleverly did he pass himself off as a bitter enemy of capital that he was entrusted with secrets of the utmost value and took part in making the plans and procuring the dynamite to execute them. The quality of his nerve (as well as his foolhardiness) is shown by the fact that he once carried a dress-suit case full of the explosive around the city, jumping on and off street cars, and dodging vehicles. When the proper moment came and the dynamite had been placed in an uncompleted building on Twenty-second Street, Guthrie gave the signal and the police arrested the dynamiters—all of them, including Guthrie, who was placed with the rest in a cell in the Tombs and continued to report to the district attorney all the information which he thus secured from his unsuspecting associates. Indeed, it was hard to convince the authorities that Guthrie was a spy and not a mere accomplice who had turned State’s evidence, a distinction of far-reaching legal significance so far as his evidence was concerned.

The final episode in the drama was the unearthing by the police of Hoboken of the secret cache of the dynamiters, containing a large quantity of the explosive. Guthrie’s instructions as to how they should find it read like a page from Poe’s “Gold Bug.” You had to go at night to a place where a lonely road crossed the Erie Railroad tracks in the Hackensack meadows, and mark the spot where the shadow of a telegraph pole (cast by an arc light) fell on a stone wall. This you must climb and walk so many paces north, turn and go so many feet west, and then north again. You then came to a white stone, from which you laid your course through more latitude and longitude until you were right over the spot. The police of Hoboken did as directed, and after tacking round and round the field, found the dynamite. Of course, the union said the whole thing was a plant, and that Guthrie had put the dynamite in the field himself at the instigation of his employers, but before the case came to trial both dynamiters pleaded guilty and went to Sing Sing. One of them turned out to be an ex-convict, a burglar. I often wonder where Guthrie is now. He certainly cared little for his life. Perhaps he is down in Venezuela or Mexico. He could never be aught than a soldier of fortune. But for a long time the employers thought that Guthrie was a detective sent by the unions to compromise them in the very dynamiting they were trying to stop!

I once had a particularly dangerous and unfortunate case where a private client was being blackmailed by a half-crazy ruffian who had never seen him, but had selected him arbitrarily, as a person likely to give up money. The blackmailer was a German Socialist, who was out of employment—a man of desperate character. He had made up his mind that the world owed him a living, and he had decided that the easiest way to get it was to make some more prosperous person give him a thousand dollars under threat of being exposed as an enemy of society.

The charge was so absurd as to be almost ludicrous, but had my client caused the blackmailer’s arrest the matter would have been the subject of endless newspaper notoriety and comment. It was therefore thought wise to make use of other means, and I procured the assistance of a young German-American of my acquaintance, who, in the guise of a vaudeville artist seeking a job, went to the blackmailer’s boarding-house and pretended to be looking for an actor friend with a name not unlike that of the criminal.

After two or three visits he managed to scrape an acquaintance with the blackmailer and thereafter spent much time with him. Both were out of work, both were Germans, and both liked beer. My friend had just enough money to satisfy this latter craving. In a month or so they were intimate friends and used to go fishing together down the bay. At last, after many months, the criminal disclosed to the detective his plan of blackmailing my client, and suggested that as two heads were better than one they had better make it a joint venture. The detective pretended to balk at the idea at first, but was finally persuaded, and at the other’s request undertook the delivery of the blackmailing letters to my client! Inside of three weeks he had in his possession enough evidence in the criminal’s own handwriting to send him to prison for the rest of his life. When at last the detective disclosed his identity the blackmailer at first refused to believe him, and then literally rolled on the floor in his agony and fear at discovering how he had been hoodwinked. The next day he disappeared and has not been heard of since, but his letters are in my vault, ready to be used if he again puts in an appearance.

The records of the police and of the private agencies contain many instances where murderers have confessed their guilt long after the crime to supposed friends, who were in reality decoys placed there for that very purpose. It is a peculiarity of criminals that they cannot keep their secrets locked in their own breasts. The impulse to confession is universal, particularly in women. Egotism has some part in this, but the chief element is the desire for companionship. Criminals have a horror of dying under an alias. The dignity of identity appeals even to the tramp. This impulse leads oftentimes to the most unnecessary and suicidal disclosures. The murderer who has planned and executed a diabolical homicide and who has retired to obscurity and safety will very likely in course of time make a clean breast of it to some one whom he believes to be his friend. He wants to “get it off his chest,” to talk it over, to discuss its fine points, to boast of how clever he was, to ask for unnecessary advice about his conduct in the future, to have at least one other person in the world who has seen his soul’s nakedness.

The interesting feature of such confessions from a legal point of view is that, no matter how circumstantial they may be, they are not usually of themselves sufficient under our law to warrant a conviction. The admission or confession of a defendant needs legal corroboration. This corroboration is often very difficult to find, and frequently cannot be secured at all. This provision of the statutes is doubtless a wise one to prevent hysterical, suicidal, egotistical, and semi-insane persons from meeting death in the electric chair or on the gallows, but it often results in the guilty going unpunished. Personally, I have never known a criminal to confess a crime of which he was innocent. The nearest thing to it in my experience is when one criminal, jointly guilty with another and sure of conviction, has drawn lots with his pal, lost, confessed, and in the confession exculpated his companion.

In the police organization of almost every large city there are a few men who are genuinely gifted for the work of detection. Such an one was Petrosino, a great detective, and an honest, unselfish, and heroic man, who united indefatigable patience and industry with reasoning powers of a high order. The most thrilling evening of my life was when my wife and I listened before a crackling fire in my library to Joe’s story of the Van Cortlandt Park murder, the night before I was going to prosecute the case. Sitting stiffly in an arm-chair, his great, ugly moon-face expressionless save for an occasional flash from his black eyes, Petrosino recounted slowly and accurately how, by means of a single slip of paper bearing the penciled name “Sabbatto Gizzi, P. O. Box 239, Lambertville, N. J.,” he had run down the unknown murderer of an unknown Italian stabbed to death in the park’s shrubbery. The paper contained neither the name of the criminal nor his victim, but by means of this slender clue he had gone to Lambertville and found an Italian who had identified the deceased as a man who had left Lambertville for New York in the company of another Italian named Strollo. Petrosino interviewed Strollo, who admitted the trip but denied any knowledge of his companion’s death. He had, he said, turned him over to his brother, for whom Strollo had been searching.

In Strollo’s pocket Petrosino found a letter to the brother from Tony Torsielli, the murdered man. It was in Strollo’s own handwriting and enclosed in an envelope addressed to Torsielli himself at Lambertville. This envelope bore a red two-cent stamp. On the basis of this letter, aided by Strollo’s contradictory statements, Petrosino reconstructed the murder and demonstrated that there was no brother, that Strollo had invented him for the purpose of luring Torsielli to New York, and that he had acted as amanuensis for Torsielli and carried on the correspondence for both. The envelope addressed in Strollo’s handwriting to Torsielli at Lambertville was the key to the whole mystery. There was no reason why Strollo should be writing to his own friend whom he saw daily and who lived beside him in the same town. Neither, argued Petrosino, would there be any reason for putting on a two-cent stamp in a place so small as to have no mail delivery. Ergo, the envelope must have been intended to create the impression that it had been mailed from some other place, by another person—from whom but the fictitious brother? Bit by bit Petrosino built up a case entirely out of circumstantial evidence that demonstrated Strollo’s guilt to a mathematical certainty. So vivid was Petrosino’s account of his labors that in opening the case next day to the jury I had but to repeat the story I had heard the night before. Strollo was convicted after a week’s trial before Judge O’Gorman in the Criminal Term of the Supreme Court and paid the penalty of his treachery in the electric chair. For him I felt not one pang of pity or remorse.

But during the preparation for the case the function of the detective as a decoy was demonstrated in a most effective manner. Strollo was confined in the House of Detention and a detective from head-quarters was introduced there as an ostensible prisoner, under the name of Silvio. Strollo and he became great friends, and when the former was removed to the Tombs the murderer wrote elaborately to the detective, requesting him to testify as a witness at the trial on his behalf and instructing him what to say in order to establish an alibi. Those letters were the last nails in Strollo’s coffin. After his conviction they were stolen by somebody and could not be included in the case on appeal, for which reason the court had some doubt as to whether the conviction should be affirmed. Before the Court of Appeals rendered its decision, however, I found, while cleaning out my safe, photographs of the letters which I had had taken as a precautionary measure, but the existence of which I had forgotten. I now have every important document that comes into my hands as evidence photographed as a matter of course.

Petrosino’s physical characteristics were so pronounced that he was probably as widely, if not more widely, known than any other Italian in New York. He was short and heavy, with enormous shoulders and a bull neck, on which was placed a great round head like a summer squash. His face was pock-marked, and he talked with a deliberation that was due to his desire for accuracy, but which at times might have been suspected to arise from some other cause. He rarely smiled and went methodically about his business, which was to drive the Italian criminals out of the city and country. Of course, being a marked man in more senses than one, it was practically impossible to disguise himself, and, accordingly, he had to rely upon his own investigations and detective powers, supplemented by the efforts of the trained men in the Italian branch, many of whom are detectives of a high order of ability. If the life of Petrosino were to be written, it would be a book unique in the history of criminology and crime, for this man was probably the only great detective of the world to find his career in a foreign country amid criminals of his own race.

I have instanced Petrosino as an example of a police detective of a very unusual type, but I have known several other men on the New York Police Force of real genius in their own particular lines of work. One of these is an Irishman who makes a specialty of get-rich-quick men, oil and mining stock operators, wire-tappers and their kin, and who knows the antecedents and history of most of them better than any other man in the country. He is ready to take the part of either a “sucker” or a fellow crook, as the exigencies of the case may demand.

And then there was old Tom Byrnes, of whom everybody knows. There are detectives—real ones—on the police force of all the great cities of the world to-day, most of them specialists, a few of them geniuses capable of undertaking the ferreting out of any sort of mystery, but the last are rare. The police detective usually lacks the training, education, and social experience to make him effective in dealing with the class of élite criminals who make high society their field. Yet, of course, it is this class of crooks who most excite our interest and who fill the pages of popular detective fiction.

The head-quarters man has no time nor inclination to follow the sporting duchess and the fictitious earl who accompanies her in their picturesque wanderings around the world. He is busy inside the confines of his own country. Parents or children may disappear, but the mere seeking of oblivion on their part is no crime and does not concern him except by special dispensation on the part of his superiors. Divorced couples may steal their own children back and forward, royalties may inadvertently involve themselves with undesirables, governmental information exude from State portals in a peculiar manner, business secrets pass into the hands of rivals, race-horses develop strange and untimely diseases, husbands take long and mysterious trips from home—a thousand exciting and worrying things may happen to the astonishment, distress, or intense interest of nations, governments, political parties, or private individuals, which from their very nature are outside the purview of the regular police. Here, then, is the field of the secret agent or private detective, and here, forsooth, is where the detective of genuine deductive powers and the polished address of the so-called “man of the world” is required.

There are two classes of cases where a private detective must needs be used, if indeed any professional assistance is to be called in: first, where the person whose identity is sought to be discovered or whose activities are sought to be terminated is not a criminal or has committed no crime, and second, where, though a crime has been committed, the injured parties cannot afford to undertake a public prosecution.

For example, if you are receiving anonymous letters, the writer of which accuses you of all sorts of unpleasant things, you would, of course, much prefer to find out who it is and stop him quietly than to turn over the correspondence to the police and let the writer’s attorneys publicly cross-examine you at his trial as to your past career. Even if a diamond necklace is stolen from a family living on Fifth Avenue, there is more than an even chance that the owner will prefer to conceal her loss rather than to have her picture in the morning paper. Yet she will wish to find the necklace if she can.

When the matter has no criminal side at all, the police cannot be availed of, although we sometimes read that the officers of the local precinct have spent many hours in trying to locate Mrs. So-and-So’s lost Pomeranian, or in performing other functions of an essentially private nature—most generously. But if, for example, your daughter is made the recipient, almost daily, of anonymous gifts of jewelry which arrive by mail, express, or messenger, and you are anxious to discover the identity of her admirer and return them, you will probably wish to engage outside assistance.

Where will you seek it? You can do one of two things: go to a big agency and secure the services of the right man, or engage such a man outside who may or may not be a professional detective. I have frequently utilized with success in peculiar and difficult cases the services of men whom I knew to be common-sense persons, with a natural taste for ferreting out mysteries, but who were not detectives at all. Your head book-keeper may have real talents in this direction—if he is not above using them. Naturally, the first essential is brains—and if you can give the time to the matter, your own head will probably be the best one for your purposes. If, then, you are willing to undertake the job yourself, all you need is some person or persons to carry out your instructions, and such are by no means difficult to find. I have had many a case run down by my own office force—clerks, lawyers, and stenographers, all taking a turn at it. Why not? Is the professional sleuth working on a fixed salary for a regular agency and doing a dozen different jobs each month as likely to bring to bear upon your own private problem as much intelligence as you yourself?

There is no mystery about such work, except what the detective himself sees fit to enshroud it with. Most of us do detective work all the time without being conscious of it. Simply because the matter concerns the theft of a pearl, or the betraying of a business or professional secret, or the disappearance of a friend, the opinion of a stranger becomes no more valuable. And the chances are equal that the stranger will make a bungle of it.

Many of the best available detectives are men who work by themselves without any permanent staff, and who have their own regular clients, generally law firms and corporations. Almost any attorney knows several such, and the chief advantage of employing one of them lies in the fact that you can learn just what their abilities are by personal experience. They usually command a high rate of remuneration, but deductive ability and resourcefulness are so rare that they are at a premium and can only be secured by paying it. These men are able, if necessary, to assume the character of a doctor, traveller, man-about-town, or business agent without wearing in their lapels a sign that they are detectives, and they will reason ahead of the other fellow and can sometimes calculate pretty closely what he will do. Twenty-five dollars a day will generally hire the best of them, and they are well worth it.

The detective business swarms with men of doubtful honesty and morals, who are under a constant temptation to charge for services not rendered and expenses not incurred, who are accustomed to exaggeration if not to perjury, and who have neither the inclination nor the ability to do competent work.

Once they get their clutches on a wealthy client, they resemble the shyster lawyer in their efforts to bleed him by stimulating his fears of publicity and by holding out false hopes of success, and thus prolonging their period of service. An unscrupulous detective will, almost as a matter of course, work on two jobs at once and charge all his time to each client. He will constantly report progress when nothing has been accomplished, and his expenses will fill pages of his notebook. Meantime his daily reports will fall like a shower of autumn leaves. In no profession is it more essential to know the man who is working for you. If you need a detective, get the best you can find, put a limit on the expense, and give him your absolute confidence.

CHAPTER VI
DETECTIVES WHO DETECT

In the preceding chapter the writer discussed at some length the real, as distinguished from the fancied, attributes of detectives in general, and the weaknesses as well as the virtues of the so-called detective “agency.” There are in the city of New York at the present time about one hundred and fifty licensed detectives. Under the detective license laws each of these has been required to file with the State comptroller written evidences of his good character, competency, and integrity, approved by five reputable freeholders of his county, and to give bond in the sum of two thousand dollars. He also has to pay a license fee of one hundred dollars per annum, but this enables him to employ as many “operators” as he chooses. In other words, the head of the agency may be a high-class man and his agents wholly undesirable citizens. How often this is the case is known to none better than the heads themselves. The strength and efficiency of a detective agency does not lie in the name at the top of its letter-paper, but in the unknown personnel of the men who are doing or shirking the work. I believe that most of the principals of the many agencies throughout the United States are animated by a serious desire to give their clients a full return for their money and loyal and honest service. But the best intentions in the world cannot make up for the lack of untiring vigilance in supervising the men who are being employed in the client’s service.

It is right here that the “national” has an immense advantage over the small agency which cannot afford to keep a large staff of men constantly on hand, but is forced to engage them temporarily as they may be needed. The “national” agency can shift its employees from place to place as their services are required, and the advantages of centralization are felt as much in this sort of work as in any other industry. The licensed detective who sends out a hurry call for assistants is apt to be able to get only men whom he would otherwise not employ. In this chapter, the word “national,” as applied to a detective agency, refers not to the title under which such an agency may do its business, but to the fact that it is organized and equipped to render services all over the country.

In this connection it is worth noticing that the best detective agencies train their own operators, selecting them from picked material. The candidate must as a rule be between twenty and thirty-five years of age, sound of body, and reasonably intelligent. He gets pretty good wages from the start. From the comparatively easy work of watching or “locating,” he is advanced through the more difficult varieties of “shadowing” and “trailing,” until eventually he may develop into a first-class man who will be set to unravel a murder mystery or to “rope” a professional criminal. But with years of training the best material makes few real detectives, and the real detective remains in fact the man who sits at the mahogany desk in the central office and presses the row of mother of pearl buttons in front of him.

If you know the heads or superintendents of the large agencies you will find that the “star” cases, of which they like to talk, are, for the most part, the pursuit and capture of forgers and murderers. The former, as a rule, are “spotted” and “trailed” to their haunts, and when sufficient evidence has been obtained the police are notified, and a raid takes place, or the arrest is made, by the State authorities. In the case of a murderer, in a majority of cases, his capture is the result of skilful “roping” by an astute detective who manages to get into his confidence. For example, a murder is committed by an Italian miner. Let us suppose he has killed his “boss,” or even the superintendent or owner. He disappears. As the reader knows, the Italians are so secretive that it is next to impossible to secure any information—even from the relatives of a murdered man.

The first thing is to locate the assassin. An Italian detective is sent into the mine as a laborer. Months may elapse before he gets on familiar or intimate terms with his fellows. All the time he is listening and watching. Presently he hears something that indicates that the murderer is communicating with one of his old friends either directly or through third parties. It is then generally only a question of time before his whereabouts are ascertained. Once he is “located” the same method is followed in securing additional evidence or material in the nature of a confession or admission tending to establish guilt. Having previously “roped” the murderer’s friends, the detective now proceeds to the more difficult task of “roping” the murderer himself. Of course, the life of a detective in a Pennsylvania coal mine would be valueless if his identity were discovered, and yet the most daring pieces of detective work are constantly being performed under these and similar conditions. Where the criminal is not known, the task becomes far more difficult and at times exceedingly dangerous.

One of my own friends, an Italian gentleman, spent several months in the different mines of this country, where Italians are largely employed, investigating conditions and ascertaining for the benefit of his government the extent to which anarchy was prevalent. It was necessary for him to secure work as a miner at the lowest wages and to disguise himself in such a way that it would be impossible for anybody to detect his true character. Fortunately, the great diversity of Italian dialects facilitated his efforts and enabled him to pass himself off as from another part of the country than his comrades. Having made his preparations he came to New York as an immigrant and joined a party of newly arrived Italians on their way to the coal mines of West Virginia. Without following him further, it is enough to say that during his service in the mines he overheard much that was calculated to interest exceedingly the authorities at Rome. Had his disguise been penetrated the quick thrust of a five-inch blade would have ended his career. He would never have returned to New York. There would only have been another dead “Dago” miner. The local coroner would have driven up in his buggy, looked at the body, examined the clean, deep wound in the abdomen, shrugged his shoulders, and empanelled a heterogeneous jury who would have returned a verdict to the effect that “deceased came to his death through a stab wound inflicted by some person to the jury unknown.” My friend was not a professional detective, but the recital of his experiences was enough to fill me with new respect for those engaged in the “man hunt” business among the half civilized miners of the coal regions.

But the work of even the “national” agencies is not of the kind which the novel-reading public generally associates with detectives—that is to say, it rarely deals with the unravelling of “mysteries,” except the identity of passers of fraudulent paper and occasional murderers. The protection of the banks is naturally the most important work that such an agency can perform.

The National Bankers’ Association consists of eleven thousand members. “Pinkerton’s Bank and Bankers’ Protection” has a large organization of subscribers. These devote themselves to identifying and running down all criminals whose activities are dangerous to them. Here the agency and the police work hand in hand, exchanging photographs of crooks and suspects and keeping closely informed as to each other’s doings. Yet there is no official connection between any detective agency and the police of any city. It is an almost universal rule that a private detective shall not make an arrest. The reasons for this are manifold. In the first place, the private detective has neither the general authority nor the facilities for the manual detention of a criminal. A blue coat and brass buttons, to say nothing of a night stick, are often invaluable stage properties in the last act of the melodrama. And as the criminal authorities are eventually to deal with the defendant anyway, it is just as well if they come into the case as soon as may be. It goes without saying, of course, that a detective per se has no more right to make an arrest than any private citizen—nor has a policeman, for that matter, save in exceptional cases. The officer is valuable for his dignity, avoirdupois, “bracelets,” and other accessories. The police thus get the credit of many arrests in difficult cases where all the work has been done by private detectives, and it is good business for the latter to keep mum about it.

One of the chief assets of the big agency is its accumulated information concerning all sorts of professional criminals. Its galleries are quite as complete as those of the local head-quarters, for a constant exchange of art objects is going on with the police throughout the world. And as the agency is protecting banks all over the United States it has greater interest in all bank burglars as a class than the police of any particular city who are only concerned with the burglars who (as one might say) burgle in their particular burg. Thus, you are more likely to find a detective from a national agency following a forger to Australasia or Polynesia than you are a sleuth from 300 Mulberry Street, New York.

The best agencies absolutely decline to touch divorce and matrimonial cases of any sort. It does not do a detective agency any good to have its men constantly upon the witness stand subject to attack, with a consequent possible reflection upon their probity of character and truthfulness. Moreover, a good detective is too valuable a person to be wasting his time in the court-room. In the ordinary divorce case the detective, having procured his evidence, is obliged to remain on tap and subject to call as a witness for at least three or four months, during which time he cannot be sent away on distant work. Neither can the customer be charged ordinarily for waiting time, and apart from its malodorous character the business is not desirable from a financial point of view.

The national agencies prefer clean criminal work, murder cases, and general investigating. They no longer undertake any policing, strike-breaking, or guarding. The most ridiculous misinformation in regard to their participation in this sort of work has been spread broadcast largely by jealous enemies and by the labor unions.

By way of illustration, one Thomas Beet, describing himself as an English detective, contributed an article to the New York Tribune of September 16, 1906, in which he said:

“In one of the greatest of our strikes, that involving the steel industry, over two thousand armed detectives were employed supposedly to protect property, while several hundred more were scattered in the ranks of strikers as workmen. Many of the latter became officers in the labor bodies, helped to make laws for the organizations, made incendiary speeches, cast their votes for the most radical movements made by the strikers, participated in and led bodies of the members in the acts of lawlessness that eventually caused the sending of State troops and the declaration of martial law. While doing this, these spies within the ranks were making daily reports of the plans and purposes of the strikers. To my knowledge, when lawlessness was at its height and murder ran riot, these men wore little patches of white on the lapels of their coats so that their fellow detectives of the two thousand would not shoot them down by mistake.”

He, of course, referred to the great strike at Homestead, Pennsylvania, in 1892. In point of fact, there were only six private detectives engaged on the side of the employers at that time, and these were there to assist the local authorities in taking charge of six hundred and fifty watchmen, and to help place the latter upon the property of the steel company. These watchmen were under the direction of the sheriff and sworn in as peace officers of the county. Mr. Beet seems to have confused his history and mixed up the white handkerchief of the Huguenots of Nantes with the strike-breakers of Pennsylvania. It is needless to repeat (as Mr. Robert A. Pinkerton stated at the time) that the white label story is ridiculously untrue, and that it was the strikers who attacked the watchmen, and not the watchmen the strikers. One striker and one watchman were killed.

But this attack of Mr. Beet upon his own profession, under the guise of being an English detective (it developed that he was an ex-divorce detective from New York City), was not confined to his remarks about inciting wanton murder. On the contrary, he alleged (as one having authority and not merely as a scribe) that American detective agencies were practically nothing but blackmailing concerns, which used the information secured in a professional capacity to extort money from their own clients.

“Think of the so-called detective,” says Mr. Beet, “whose agency pays him two dollars or two dollars and fifty cents a day, being engaged upon confidential work and in the possession of secrets that he knows are worth money! Is it any wonder that so many cases are sold out by employees, even when the agencies are honest?”

We are constrained to answer that it is no more wonderful than that any person earning the same sum should remain honest when he might so easily turn thief. As the writer has himself pointed out in these pages, there are hundreds of so-called detective agencies which are but traps for the guileless citizen who calls upon them for aid. But there are many which are as honestly conducted as any other variety of legitimate business. I do not know Mr. Beet’s personal experience, but it appears to have been unfortunate. At any rate, his diatribe is unfounded and false, and the worst feature of it is his assertion that detective agencies make a business of manufacturing cases when there happen to be none on hand.

“Soon,” says he, “there were not enough cases to go around, and then with the aid of spies and informers the unscrupulous detectives began to make cases. Agencies began to work up evidence against persons and then resorted to blackmail, or else approached those to whom the information might be valuable, and by careful manœuvring had themselves retained to unravel the case. This brought into existence hordes of professional informers who secured the opening wedges for the fake agencies. Men and women, many of them of some social standing, made it a practice to pry around for secrets which might be valuable; spies kept up their work in large business establishments and began to haunt the cafés and resorts of doubtful reputation, on the watch for persons of wealth and prominence who might be foolish enough to place themselves in compromising circumstances. Even the servants in wealthy families soon learned that certain secrets of the master and mistress could be turned to profitable account. We shudder when we hear of the system of espionage maintained in Russia, while in the large American cities, unnoticed, are organizations of spies and informers on every hand who spend their lives digging pitfalls for the unwary who can afford to pay.”

One would think that we were living in the days of the Borgias! “Ninety per cent,” says Mr. Beet, “of private detective agencies are rotten to the core and simply exist and thrive upon a foundation of dishonesty, deceit, conspiracy, and treachery to the public in general and their own patrons in particular. There are detectives at the heads of prominent agencies in this country whose pictures adorn the Rogues’ Gallery; men who have served time in various prisons for almost every crime on the calendar.”

This harrowing picture has the modicum of truth that makes it insidiously dangerous. But this last extravagance betrays the denunciator. One would be interested to have this past-master of overstatement mention the names of these distinguished crooks that head the prominent agencies. Their exposure, if true, would not be libellous, and it would seem that he had performed but half his duty to the public in refraining from giving this important, if not vital, information.

I know several of these gentlemen whose pictures I feel confident do not appear in and (much less) do not adorn the Rogues’ Gallery, and who have not been, as yet, convicted of crime. A client is as safe in the hands of a good detective agency as he is in the hands of a good lawyer; he should know his agency, that is all—just as he should know his lawyer. The men at the head of the big agencies generally take the same pride in their work as the members of any learned profession. They know that a first-class reputation for honesty is essential to their financial success and that good will is their stock in trade. Take this away and they would have nothing.

In 1878 the founder of one of the most famous of our national agencies promulgated in printed form for the benefit of his employees what he called his general principles. One of these was the following:

“This agency only offers its services at a stated per diem for each detective employed on an operation, giving no guarantee of success, except in the reputation for reliability and efficiency; and any person in its service who shall, under any circumstances, permit himself or herself to receive a gift, reward, or bribe shall be instantly dismissed from the service.”

Another:

“The profession of the detective is a high and honorable calling. Few professions excel it. He is an officer of justice, and must himself be pure and above reproach.”

Again:

“It is an evidence of the unfitness of the detective for his profession when he is compelled to resort to the use of intoxicating liquors; and, indeed, the strongest kind of evidence, if he continually resorts to this evil practice. The detective must not do anything to farther sink the criminal in vice or debauchery, but, on the contrary, must seek to win his confidence by endeavoring to elevate him, etc.”

“Kindness and justice should go hand in hand, whenever it is possible, in the dealings of the detective with the criminal. There is no human being so degraded but there is some little bright spark of conscience and of right still existing in him.”

Last:

“The detective must, in every instance, report everything which is favorable to the suspected party, as well as everything which may be against him.”

The man who penned these principles had had the safety of Abraham Lincoln in his keeping; and these simple statements of his faith are the best refutation of the baseless assertions above referred to.

It may be that in those days the detection of crime was a bit more elementary than at the present time. One can hardly picture a modern sleuth delaying long in an attempt to evangelize his quarry, but these general principles are the right stuff and shine like good deeds in a naughty world.

As one peruses this little pink pamphlet he is constantly struck by the repeated references to the detective as an actor. That was undoubtedly the ancient concept of a sleuth. “He must possess, also, the player’s faculty of assuming any character that his case may require, and of acting it out to the life with an ease and naturalness which shall not be questioned.” This somewhat large order is, to our relief, qualified a little later on. “It is not to be expected, however,” the author admits, “that every detective shall possess these rare qualifications, although the more talented and versatile he is, the higher will be the sphere of operation which he will command.”

The modern detective agency is conducted on business principles and does not look for histrionic talent or general versatility. As one of the heads of a prominent agency said to me the other day:

“When we want a detective to take the part of a plumber we get a plumber, and when we need one to act as a boiler-maker we go out and get a real one—if we haven’t one on our pay-rolls.”

“But,” I replied, “when you need a man to go into a private family and pretend to be an English clergyman, or a French viscount, or a brilliant man of the world—who do you send?”

The “head” smiled.

“The case hasn’t arisen yet,” said he. “When it does I guess we’ll get the real thing.”

The national detective agency, with its thousands of employees who have, most of them, grown up and received their training in its service, is a powerful organization, highly centralized, and having an immense sinking fund of special knowledge and past experience. This is the product of decades of patient labor and minute record. The agency which offers you the services of a Sherlock Holmes is a fraud, but you can accept as genuine a proposition to run down any man whose picture you may be able to identify in the gallery. The day of the impersonator is over. The detective of this generation is a hard-headed business man with a stout pair of legs.

This accumulated fund of information is the heritage of an honest and long established industry. It is seventy-five per cent of its capital. It is entirely beyond the reach of the mushroom agency, which in consequence has to accept less desirable retainers involving no such requirements, or go to the wall. The collection of photographs is almost priceless and the clippings, letters, and memoranda in the filing cases only secondarily so. Very few of the “operators” pretend to anything but common-sense with, perhaps, some special knowledge of the men they are after. They are not clairvoyants or mystery men, but they will tirelessly follow a crook until they get him. They are the regular troops who take their orders without question. The real “detective” is the “boss” who directs them.