Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 17.pdf/656

Rh building of bridges over the Nile, or battle During all this time a large number of jurors ships for Russia and Japan, to harvest are kept in attendance, drawing pay but ing, reaping, plowing, and even making rendering no service. butter by machinery, faster than other While examining witnesses, counsel are people, a court in conservative old England permitted to sit at the table and take notes, will dispose of a half dozen jury cases in consuming nearly double the time necessary the time that would be required here in if they were required to stand. Probably despatching one. The cause is not far to more time is lost by want of rapidity in seek. It lies in the close confinement of putting questions than in any other way counsel to the questions at issue, and the — no long delays, but a habit of dawdling prompt interposition of the court to prevent between questions, which not only consumes delay. The trial is conducted by men a great deal of time in the aggregate, but is trained for that special purpose, whose usually destructive of the very purpose of a interest it is to expedite and not to pro cross-examination. Not only are one's ideas long them. No time is wasted in immate clearer and more abundant if the examiner rial matters. Objections to testimony are be standing, but where questions are discouraged, rarely argued, and almost never rapidly put, no time is allowed an unwilling made the subject of exception. The testi witness to concoct an untruthful answer. mony is confined to the exact point in issue. Where a stenographer is employed, the Mere oratory is 'at a discount. New trials practice of taking notes is not only unnec are rarely granted. A criminal trial espe essary but an intolerable nuisance. From cially is a serious business, since in case of a personal experience I have found that at verdict of guilty, it is all up with the defen least one-third of the time was saved by dant, and nothing can save him from pun requiring counsel to stand. Objections are constantly made to im ishment but the pardoning power of the material items of testimony and argued as Home Secretary. The result is that homi cides are infrequent, and offenders rarely though the whole case depended upon them, when no argument should be encouraged escape punishment for their crimes. The delays in bringing cases to trial, except at the suggestion of the judge him which are so frequently the cause of com self, who in the end usually resorts to that plaint in this country, and which were fully favorite device of weak judges of admitting treated of in a recent number of the GREEN testimony subject to objection, and thus BAG, are serious enough; but the delays getting it before the jury. Equally inde which vex the soul, weary the patience, and fensible is the habit of submitting cases to deplete the pockets of litigants and tax a jury when there is really no conflicting payers, are those which take place after the evidence. As a matter of practice, I have found that about fifty per cent of the cases case is called for trial. There is first the empanelling of the jury should be taken from the jury. Finally, in its charge, the court is forbidden — a proceeding which ought never take more than an hour or two', but for some in many of the states from indicating its reason I could never quite understand, is opinion, or even commenting upon the facts, sometimes made to consume a month or and is tied up to giving or refusing a series even six weeks, in which each proposed of requests prepared by counsel, which are juror is expected to give the history of his thrown at the heads of the jury unexplained life and of his opinions upon every conceiv by any reference to the facts, and which able subject, for the apparent purpose of must often serve to entangle them in hope laying the ground, not for a challenge for less confusion. The judge is thus stripped cause, but for a peremptory challenge. of his ancient function of advising the jury,