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The Green Bag

the incidents arising ante litem motam

“Yet what a theme for the pen of the

to the dénouement of ﬁnal judgment.

serio-comic muse is the fate of that poor chap arrested and convicted in South Carolina colonial days for disturbing a religious meeting, on the ground that when he tried to sing it moved the con gregation to irresistible laughter —a mere nugget from the dramatic material on our ofﬁce shelves, a mine workable only on the placer theory;

As De Maupassant—-and probably many others—has said, ‘life resolves itself naturally into drama,’ and the shelves

of every law library are replete with heart throbs, containing the plots and the characters for more dramas and better dramas than have been written by the human pen since the days of Aristophanes. For law is life epito

mized, and courts of law have been cynically described as ‘great maternity hospitals for the miscarriage of justice.” “While all this is true, while it is

though, by the way, Mr. Anthony Hope has recently woven a charming love story around a disputed right of way.

“Criminal trials and the quasi-criminal

ﬁt the wheels of a chariot drawn by

divorce and breach of promise litigations appeal most vividly to the makers of plays and to the popular imagination generally. How many young men would select the law for a profession if they did not dream of one day addressing a jury and melting it to tears by their eloquence, like Raymond Floriot in

Pegasus.

‘Madame X’?"

indisputable that every writer

and

dramatist might glean vast stores of humor and pathos from out the hidden world that lies between rotting sheep skin covers, the fact remains that the

grooves

of

legal

procedure

do

not

The Doctrine of Harmless Error HE- Oklahoma Criminal Court of Appeals has plainly stated the policy which it proposes to pursue in ruling upon appeals based upon tech

nicalities not affecting the substantial merits of controversies that may come

before it.

In Byers v. Territory, 103

Pac. 532, the Court declares that it “will not reverse the conviction upon any technicality or exception which

did not deprive the defendant of a substantial right." We quote : “Justice demands that in the ad ministration of law its processes should never be allowed to become a game of

spirit of disgust for law and contempt for courts in the public mind. Reduced to its last analysis, the doctrine contended for by counsel, if recognized, would require this court to hold that, where evidence is admitted during a trial and upon appeal it is held that such

evidence was improperly admitted, a reversal of the conviction must follow,

regardless of the character of the evi dence in the record, upon the ground that, the prosecution having offered this evi dence as a part of its case, it is estopped

from denying its injurious effect.

‘fr:

“It appears to us that this applica

skill between contending counsel. There

tion of the doctrine of estoppel, to the

has been entirely too much of this in the

state, in the enforcement of its criminal

past. It has resulted in the miscarriage of justice in many cases, and has bred a

law, on account of the ignorance or

mistaken judgment of one of its servants,