Twang

Year in, year out, for many a year, pleased citizens have contemplated lawyers' proposals for judicial reform. Other citizens have been vexed that the field for reform never lessened. Last week a familiar twa,ng was sounded in the annual meeting of the American Bar Association. Mayor Dever of Chicago decried prohibition. Onetime Bar-President Chester I. Long decried present methods of judicial procedure. Oscar Hallam of St. Paul decried paroles. Expert witnesses, insanity defense, Senator Thomas J. Walsh (who is holding up in the Senate a bill for simplification of procedure)--all were decried seriatim; Finally, the Association elected former Governor Charles S. Whitman of New York president for the coming year, then adopted a resolution that "the American citizen of today is bartering his individual liberties and rights for Government bounties and bonuses."

Simultaneously, the report of the National Crime Commission was published. Headed by onetime Governor Hadley of Missouri, and composed of distinguished barristers like Judson Harmon, former Attorney General of the U. S., Roscoe Pound, Dean of the Harvard Law School, Edwin R. Keedy, a former Judge Advocate of the U. S. army, this gathering of greywigs spoke weightily. It recommended:

In order to eliminate forced confessions and third degree methods, persons charged with felony should be informed as to their rights, then allowed to answer publicly the charges preferred against them.

Defendants charged with conspiracy should be tried jointly.

If a defendant fails to testify, the Court and Counsel should have the right to comment upon the fact.

Judges should be permitted to instruct as to the law, and to comment upon the evidence and upon the testimony and character of witnesses.

In felonies, excepting capital offenses, five-sixths of the jury should be allowed to return a verdict.

Criminal procedure, now framed about the archaic conception of the protection of individual rights, should aim rather at prompt determination of the accused person's guilt or innocence. Felons should not be permitted to escape by grace of a technical legal error.