Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 6.djvu/60

 48 FEDERAL REPORTER. �The defendant then challenged one of the jurors for favor, and propounded the following questions : Question. "If, on the trial of this case, it becomes a question as to who should be believed, Anthony Comstock or the defendant, the defend- ant being proved to be in the lottery business, would you give less credit to the defendant's testimony because he is proved to be in the lottery business?" Question. "Would you give less credit to the testimony of any one proved to be in the lot- tery business than you would give to persons not in that busi- ness ?" Both questions were rejected. �These questions involved the same proposition, i. e., that the fact that a person is engaged in an illegal calling must not be permitted to affect his credibility as a witness — a proposition clearly untenable. The occupation of a person may always be shown as bearing upon his credibility. A person is not shown to be incompetent to sit as a juror upon the trial of a thief by showing that he would give less credit to a thief than to one engaged in an honest calling. �It was next shown in support of the challenge that the Juror had heard Comstock talking to a number of persons in the corridor before the trial about the wickedness of the men in the lottery business and the injury that business was doing, and that he had certain proofs against the lottery men; but nothing was said about the defendant's case. The talk was general about lottery men and the lottery business. The remarks here alluded to were not made in the presence of any person at the time swom upon the Jury in the defend- ant's case, and it cannot be held that the fact of having heard, before he was empanelled, general talk about the wickedness of those engaged in an illegal occupation disqual- ifies a person from sitting as Juror upon the trial of one engaged in such occupation who is charged with crime. �The case, as presented in the record before us, shows a further ruling upon the challenge of the Juror Perkins, to support which no effort is made, and which is so palpably erroneoua as to give rise to the supposition that its presence in the record may be attributed to an error in making up the case. As the record stands, the ruling alluded to entitles ��� �