Page:The Art of Cross-Examination.djvu/73

 cases tried. If these trials resulted in acquittals, it was anticipated that there would be acquittals all along the line; if the first offenders put on trial were convicted and sentenced to severe terms in prison, the great majority of the others would plead guilty, and few would escape.

At that time the county of New York was divided, for purposes of voting, into 1067 election districts, and on an average perhaps 250 votes were cast in each district. An inspector of one of the election districts was the first man called for trial. The charge against him was the failure to record correctly the vote cast in his district for the Republican candidate for alderman. In this particular election district there had been 167 ballots cast, and it was the duty of the inspectors to count them and return the result of their count to police headquarters.

At the trial twelve respectable citizens took the witness chair, one after another, and affirmed that they lived in the prisoner's election district, and had all cast their ballots on election day for the Republican candidate. The official count for that district, signed by the prisoner, was then put in evidence, which read: Democratic votes, 167; Republican, 0. There were a number of witnesses called by the defence who were Democrats. The case began to take on a political aspect, which was likely to result in a divided jury and no conviction, since it had been shown that the prisoner had a most excellent