Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 23.pdf/255

 Is This the Law?

227

he was out one day on a very bad bit

and that the aforesaid Clerks could not

of the glacier when the ice pack sud denly shifted and he found himself a prisoner inside it. Now you know that where two or more statutes come crush

come if they would, and would not come

ing together as they did around Brom

wich they will not weld solidly nor make a perfect joint everywhere.

This

if they could. To this Bromwich re plied with a sur-rebutter. He sur-re butted that he himself was a busy man, that he had several engagements to keep outside of jail, and that ﬁnally, as the District Attorney had not con

cold fact as to the Written Law gave

fronted him according to the law as

our man hope, for he knew he was caught somewhere between stiff sections of the Codes of Criminal Procedure,

plainly written, he, Bromwich, would

not stay in jail longer. And so it hap pened. The Courts said that the men

and Civil Procedure, and a chunk of the Bill of Rights, while what seemed a

who wrote the law might have omitted

mass of Documentary Evidence had

mentary proof suﬁiced, but it was not so written. The prisoner went free." The Nature-faker smiled. “I fancy,"

fallen across his legs.

As you lawyers

would state his predicament, he was convicted of the statutory crime of

False Registration in this State of New York. He claimed he had been duly naturalized at Bridgeport, Connecticut,

but there was written evidence against him in the shape of certiﬁcates from the Clerks of all the courts at Bridgeport showing there was no record of such naturalization, and this convicted him.

But Bromwich knew the ways of gla ciers, and so in his icy prison began to ﬁnger each joint and crevice of the de taining walls around him. The Clerks’ certiﬁcates were by the Codes proper

evidence against him, but by the Bill of Rights a man accused of crime should be

‘confronted’ by the hostile

wit

nesses. Bromwich now sent word to Court that although convicted he had not been sufficiently confronted. To this claim the District Attorney replied that Bromwich had been well confronted, and with unimpeachable documentary proof. To this Bromwich rejoined that he was insuﬁiciently confronted till all

the Clerks of all the Bridgeport Courts had been brought to face him. To this the

District

Attorney

retorted

that

confrontation by witnesses when docu

said the Barrister sourly, "you think anybody can drive a coach and four through the written law." “Of course not," said the Nature

faker cheerfully. "As to that, you should read the Law Journal of Janu ary 23, 1911, page 1670, ex parte Heigho.

Said Heigho was an Idaho man who struck another to such ill purpose that it killed the latter’s mother-in-law. Her heart, it was said, was ruptured by the

excitement of witnessing her son-in-law in an altercation, and Heigho was in dicted for manslaughter under some statute. To most laymen far more promising technicalities than any I have yet mentioned would seem to offer in

this Heigho case, but the layman would be wrong. Even the point that killing a woman is not manslaughter seems to

have been unavailing, for the indict ment has been sustained by the highest appellate tribunal. On the other hand, the criminal law last week failed to hold a man fast even after he had actu ally pleaded guilty. Did you read in the Law Journal of the laughable Inci dent of the Mountain Echo?"

Bridgeport, Conn., was out of the sov

"I did not," said the Barrister.

ereign reach of the State of New York,

“Then do read People ex rel. Patesom',