Page:The Wisconsin idea (IA cu31924032449252).pdf/288



"Is there not some danger of the public being misled by the agitation respecting inefficiency of criminal procedure? It should not be thought because of apparent failures of justice in a case now and then, and apparently unnecessary delay and expense in disposing of criminal cases in some of the large cities, that the administration of the law in Wisconsin can be judged thereby. In this state, persons accused of crime are, as a rule, promptly tried, and, doubtless, are convicted when they ought not to be, quite as often as they are acquitted when they ought not to be. Criminal cases are removable to the Supreme Court at very moderate expense and when so removed are generally and finally disposed of in from two to five months. Furthermore, the number of cases so removed are very few as compared with the total number tried.

"It will greatly surprise some persons to be told, as the fact is, that during the period of six years covered by the last twenty-two volumes of Supreme Court reports, there have been no less, probably, than four thousand trials of criminal cases in this state and three thousand convictions, while only one hundred and one cases were removed to the Supreme Court, or about two and one-half per cent of the number tried and five per cent of the number of convictions. Moreover, not more than five per cent of the total of all kinds of cases taken to the Supreme Court were criminal cases. Of those four were reversed, or one and one-third per cent of cases tried resulting in convictions.

"The foregoing can be better appreciated by considering that removals of criminal cases to the Supreme Court have averaged about one to a county once in four years, and reversals, one to a county once in ten years.

"About one-third of all the criminal cases removed to the Supreme Court during the period named, were from Milwaukee county, and yet the yearly number from there has been but about