are true. But, my friends, let us look back for a few years to the time when such young men as Mr. Lauchheimer and myself were just about to come to the Bar and we can say there was a situation in the City of Baltimore which, if not entirely equal to the present one, has, at least, a fairly close parallel. You all remember back in 1895 and before, there was a tremendous disrespect of the law. I do not want to indulge in any personalities now but it is so far history that it may be mentioned. We know that the State's Attorney's office of Baltimore City was notoriously incompetent and we know the police force was notoriously corrupt. We know that there was protection of those who desired to violate the liquor law and protection of those who desired to engage in the business of lottery or policy, from the proceeds of which some of our first families got their start. We know there was protection or some means of regulation of those disgraceful places which are unmentionable in such a company as this. We know that the officers of the law, nay, sometimes the officers of the Court, were united in one great conspiracy to show disrespect to the courts and the law of the land and that the head and front of that conspiracy was the political organization that fattened on it. The kind of organization we had in Baltimore was paralled in all the great cities of the country. It had no politics; but it did have means of carrying out its control over the machinery of justice until honorable men trembled lest the acts of violence would go to extremes unheard of. You will see a great difference between prohibition and regulation. There is a vast difference between saying we cannot take a drink on Sunday and we cannot take it at all. But after all it is only a matter of degree. What I want to bring home to you, if I may, in a more or less serious manner is that if the people of this country have made up their minds to put this or that on the statute book and carry it out it will be carried out whether it be a question of liquor or such a question as referred to by Mr. Starr, the setting up of a competent court to say to this, that or the other business man what he shall do in carrying out his trade. And when the folks have settled down and made up their minds whether they are going to vote prohibition up or down, then the sensible people, the lawabiding and courageous people of our communities will come to the front and see that the law on the books, whatever it may be, will be enforced, anybody to the contrary notwithstanding. You may ask, is there anything that ought to be

done in this connection. My feeling about the matter, my friends, is this: When you are considering what improvements may be made in the administration of criminal justice in the State and Federal Courts, you are discussing a question which, after all, is a community administration problem and not a legal problem and that the responsibility in the last resort rests with folks like you and myself who are members of the community rather than on the legal or any other single profession. It is a question whether the people are going to support the law and I have not found in my experience or in any thought I have given to this subject any reason to doubt the validity of the procedure we have had in the past or the effectiveness it may have in the future.

Shall we adopt the kind of procedure we have in the United States Court in Baltimore with all that it means? Some gentlemen perhaps would protest.

Can we hope to parallel what we have in the United States Court in Baltimore, with a District Attorney who jollies everybody along and a District Judge who scares everybody to death. We have a combination never exactly paralleled before and never to be duplicated again. We cannot adopt that as our type. Indeed I have heard it whispered, Mr. President, that justice is not administered in the United States Court at all; it is simply executed. There are, however, one or two things that are suggested whenever a problem of this sort is discussed. One of them is that you might make the judges of our Courts in Maryland judges of the law in criminal cases instead of leaving all to the jury. I think it might be some improvement but honestly I cannot say I think it will be fundamental. I do not believe there is any very great difference, when cases are well prepared, between the results you get in the Criminal Court in Baltimore City from the results you get in the United States Court across the street; and for the life of me I cannot imagine what our Court of Appeals would do if we would allow our Judges in the Criminal Court, or any other Court, to have anything to say to the jury of their own volition. The Lord knows we have all been sat upon often enough to know that sort of thing would be frowned upon. After all, it is not vital. Then it has been suggested, and I think fairly so, that we ought to take away from the defendant the absurd privilege which he has of remaining silent, to defy anybody to examine him. They I should know all abcut the crime. It is an absurd rule or

law in these days, as I think every man who practices law in the Criminal Court and elsewhere, will admit. I cannot even say as to that it is fundamental, for after all everybody knows when a man remains silent when charged with crime it is only a polite way of pleading guilty. I will admit there have been many times when I was prosecuting attorney I longed for the privilege of examining the party charged with the crime. If I were wise enough to draw a code of criminal procedure and make the necessary amendments, I would take out of the Constitution of the United States and of the State, if I could find a way to do it, that provision which permits a man accused of crime to keep silent. It is not common sense to say that the jury must not draw any presumption from the fact the accused is silent because every jury does draw it and every Judge draws it. The thing is a matter of the past and it ought to be repealed. But even that is not absolutely fundamental. The fundamental thing as I see it is administrative; it is community responsibility. I do not believe you folks realize as a matter of fact, unless you have had experience in a great city, how much it means to the political organization, I do not care what it calls itself, Repubilcan or Democrat, wet or dry, to control the machinery of criminal justice. They live on it; they fatten on it. I do not mean to say the leaders of our political organization want to cast all law to the winds or are desirous of protecting every criminal that comes along. But just think how would you act if some friend of yours were charged with a crime, someone for whom you had affection, would you stop to think of your responsibility to the law. You might, if you were an exceptional person, but the chances are you would turn every stone, and use every kind of political and other influence to get that man off and enable him to escape punishment. If you as a reputable person would do that what do you imagine is the usual fate of the leader of a political organization who sees a hundred persons in the course of a week all of whom want favors and many of whom want this kind of favor. I am not here to excoriate them but I am here to tell you that the biggest thing, as lawyers, which we can do for the administration of criminal justice is to take every part of the machinery cut of the touch of the professional politician. I say to you, my friends, take the State's Attorney out of politics. All of us are profoundly impressed with the necessity of havinggood Judges. It is infinitely more important to have a good

State's Attorney in Baltimore City than to have a good Judge on the Bench. He controls things. He can say whether a man shall be prosecuted or not and I may say that it puts my gorge at the same height to which Mr. Lauchheimer's rose as he saw the water in the tub, when I reflect on the fact it is sometimes necessary or possible for the State's Attorney of a great city to consult the leaders of a political organization as to who his assistants shall be. The people of every great city ought to see to it that the selection of the State's Attorney is made with even more care than the selection of the Judge.

I say keep the police magistrate out of politics. How can we train the police officer to keep free from every corrupt and partisan consideration when he sees sitting on the bench, the man he comes in contact with every day, a creature of the organization. Keep the hands of the politicians out of the Grand Jury. Finally I say keep the judiciary out of politics. But my friends we all sincerely thank God when it comes to Baltimore City that we have come pretty near to keeping the judiciary out of politics, and when we think about that it removes every cloud of pessimism which heretofore might have floated over our minds. When we recollect the kind of appointments and election to the Court of Appeals of Maryland and the Supreme Bench of Baltimore City we have had in one short administration; when we have seen the spectacle of men like Judge Offutt, Judge Stein and Judge Frank mount the Bench, then I say we can brush aside the clouds of apprehension and rejoice that we have made a good start, and be thankful that men of this examplary stamp are at the head not only of the administration of criminal but also at the head of civil justice in our State.

THE PRESIDENT: The Chair recognizes Mr. Raymond S. Williams.

MR. WILLIAMS: We have arranged among ourselves there should be some variety in this discussion so I am going to read what I have to say.

I was told by the President so far as I was concerned what was mainly desired of me, or the absolute desideratum was that I should be short.

In the 15 minutes I have, about all I can hope to do is to make assertions and leave the proof of them to take care of itself. Some of the assertions may seem to be pretty strong and may therefore provoke disagreement. If they do, I will

console myself with the reflection that even if they were mild there would still be disagreement among my brethern of the Bar-because it is not the habit of lawyers to agree. ever, disagreement leads to discussion, and discussion, even among lawyers, sometimes eventuates in action, and action of decisive character in the field of criminal justice, is on every hand demanded from the Bar.

How

Instead of instituting a comparison between the criminal justice administered in the Federal Courts and in the Courts of the States, I want rather to confine what I have to say to a discussion of the system of criminal justice of the States alone. In passing, however, I may say that men whose opinions have great weight with the Bar of this country (Lord Bryce was one of them) are agreed that the criminal law as administered in the Federal tribunals presents a picture of orderliness, dignity, effectiveness and public confidence which is not found in the Courts of the States. If this is true of Courts sitting in the same city, it shows that there is nothing inherent in the nature of criminal trials which makes lack of dignity and ineffectiveness unavoidable. Nor is the difference in result wholly, or even partly, due to a difference in personnel; for Federal officers are of the same general breed as State officers. The difference in the machine must bear a large share of the responsibility and the lawyers are responsible for the machine. For, on the whole, the public must give us the men, but it is the peculiar business of the Bar to invent and construct an instrument which shall be responsive to the needs of the time, and unless the Bar performs that duty, I, for one, think that the Bar has failed in the only function which entitles it to be considered as anything more than an association of men whose only object is to gain a living.

In regard to criminal justice as administered in the States of this country, the evidence of public dissatisfaction and lack of confidence is overwhelming. It is manifested in various forms. It is a commonplace that convictions are not accepted as conclusive evidence of guilt nor are acquittals received as proof of innocence. The public is not content that the course of justice should take its way through the channels provided by law, but insists that important criminal cases should first be investigated, examined and exploited in the newspapers; and, so far as the public is concerned, this is often the real trial. When the judicial trial finally comes on, it comes as an anti-climax, and is regarded as a tiresome and inconclusive