Another feature of newspaper reports which affects the administration of criminal justice is the manner in which criminals are exploited. If a man is guilty of a crime he is entitled to a fair trial, and generally speaking, he gets it; for if there is any defect in the administration of criminal justice, it operates in favor of the person accused. If he is guilty, his defense is not prejudiced, nor are his interests or welfare in any way injuriously affected, by his being subjected to the obscurity which prison walls ought to impose. Neither he nor the public interest is served by expending upon him the sickly sentimentality sometimes lavished upon criminals by well meaning but foolish persons; and if either by that sentiment or by the quest for sensation or "special articles" or "stories," the real criminal has his vanity tickled, he certainly does not find his exploitation unpleasant or offensive or injurious to his defense. But the extraneous interest aroused in this way does not aid in the administration of justice; and the effect upon the youthful, the abnormal and the weak or criminally minded, whose vanity may be appealed to, or whose imitative faculty is stimulated, by the prominence given to an obscure individual as a result of his violation of the law, is harmful. All students of the subject assert, and it is in accord with general human experience, that suggestion plays an important part in crime. It tends to produce on the part of the abnormal or the criminally inclined, that kind of crimes which promise to attract public interest. Even persons of a higher moral responsibility find themselves interested in mysterious crimes as in a game. And with persons not endowed with much power of ethical discrimination the taste for lurid fiction possesses them and their sense of right and

wrong is obscured by their sympathies or by their effort to solve what is a seemingly insoluble mystery. Crime is not presented in a repulsive aspect. The inevitable tendency is to exalt the criminal, to cultivate the ignoble, and to diminish the abhorrence of crime. This subject has frequently received the attention of penologists and psychologists. A sympathetic editorial upon a communication I sent to the New York Evening Post some years ago contains a sober and candid consideration of the subject. Among other things the editorial mentions a striking case of suggestion. I quote the portion referred to:

"A report of one such case recently came from Chicago. In that city, four young desperadoes, the oldest twenty-four, had been robbing business offices and 'holding up' citizens at the point of pistols. They were finally run down, and it is instructive to note what the ringleader, Thomas McManus, had to say of the way in which they were prompted to take up a criminal We quote from the Inter Ocean:

career.

'We heard how easy Webb and his gang got away with it and kept the Police Department on edge, so we thought we could do the same thing. We used to buy the papers and read how Perry and Webb and that bunch pulled off their jobs. The papers gave columns to it and printed diagrams and pictures and everything. That's where we got the idea. We figured that if others could do it, we could do it just a little better.

'Then, too, I guess we thought that the excitement and notoriety were worth the while. You see, the papers were printing big pictures of Webb and we sort of got the idea that Webb was the biggest hero that ever struck town. They printed long interviews with him and signed his name to them. Well, we thought we were doing something big, something to be proud of.'

While the Post expressed the suspicion that the above account was dressed up by a reporter, nevertheless, it quite cogently said that in newspaper stories of crime, particularly those which "make a newspaper hero out of a ruffian," criminal tendencies get "their last fatal push." Both my communication to the Post and the editorial referred to were evoked by remarks made by Mr. Joseph H. Choate in which he denounced the sensational headlines of some newspapers relating to crime, and the charge was admitted by the Post in the following words:

"That evil often comes of the exaggerated attention given to criminal news, and of the seeming glorification of the criminal, is admitted by all but the most unscrupulous newspapers."

And it adds:

"It has been inflamed by the modern press facilities in reporting and picturing and 'featuring' every conceivable detail of crime. That this is a crying mischief of the day, no clear-eyed and disinterested man. can doubt. Mr. Choate's words on the subject were those of truth and soberness."

But the press does not always give the subject the treatment thus accorded to it and the Post contented itself with a single editorial, little quoted and soon forgotten.

If, as some cynic has remarked, the American has a streak of lawlessness about him, the tendency to make the criminal a popular hero is a menace to our civilization.

Finally, the extent to which jurors are disqualified for service by the impressions made from reading the news

papers should not be forgotten. Probably in no other country in the world would such a thing be tolerated as that which happened in the Thaw case in New York and the Cornelius Shea case in Chicago. In the former case it took three weeks to secure a jury, and in the latter three months were occupied, during which more than 6,000 talesmen were examined.

Mr. Choate's protest against misleading headlines evoked editorial notice, but it did not modify the practice. Senator Works of California once introduced a bill to forbid newspapers in the District of Columbia from placing glaring headlines over reports of crime. And recently Senator Owen of Oklahoma introduced a bill in the Senate which provided that a newspaper should be barred from the mails which refused to publish a sworn affidavit denying, correcting or explaining any incorrect statement made by it.

In comments made before the New York Constitutional Convention of 1915, the present Chief Justice of the United States referred to what he characterized the

"unmitigated evil" and said: "The greatest evil and the most vicious one in this State is that of trial by newspapers." He continued:

"I don't see anything that can mitigate this evil of trial by newspapers. I don't see why in making this new Constitution you cannot do something to protect the administration of justice, even if it should involve a modification of the freedom of the press and permit the Legislature to pass reasonable laws along the lines that I have suggested."

He added that he would retain the unanimous vote of juries because it was one means

"to protect the defendant against one of the greatest evils-perhaps the most vicious one arising in connection with criminal cases-trial by newspapers. In many instances the defendant is convicted in newspapers ahead of time, and the Judge has the greatest difficulty in handling the case because of the atmosphere by which it has been surrounded through such newspaper publications."

Numerous other efforts have been made to correct the evil. But they have been largely spasmodic. A few of the most responsible newspapers endeavor to adopt a practice not subject to the criticism I have made, but the greater body of the press throughout the country makes little effort to present a picture of court proceed. ings which is useful in enabling readers to form an intelligent judgment of the merits of a case. The more conservative element of the press, while they guard their own conduct, do not seriously seek to bring to bear upon the question united action of the journalistic profession. Newspaper associations are not very persistent in constituting themselves mentors by putting in force rules of ethics, as associations of lawyers do. Perhaps such efforts would be unsuccessful, but ought they not to be attempted more seriously than they are? I do not think the remedy lies in resort to the power, freely exercised in England, to commit publishers of newspapers for contempt. One difficulty is that the effort to do so would be too great and too expensive, and there is gen erally no one sufficiently interested to undertake the task of proceeding against offending newspapers. The true remedy lies with the press itself in coming to a greater appreciation of the responsibility cast upon it by the possession of its enormous power. As Professor Lucv Maynard Salmon, of Vassar College, in a recently pub