It must be admitted that this is rather hard on the innocent, but they now have to suffer with the guilty for the sins of an indolent and uninterested legislature.  Moreover, if such a right of arrest were proposed, some wiseacre or politician would probably rise up and denounce the suggestion as the first step in the direction of a military dictatorship.  Thus, we shall undoubtedly fare happily on in the blissful belief that our personal liberties are the subject of the most solicitous and zealous care on the part of the authorities, guaranteed to us under a government which is not of men but of laws, until one of us happens to be arrested (by mistake, of course) and learns by sad experience the practical methods of the police in dealing with criminals and the agreeable but deceptive character of the pleasant fiction of the presumption of innocence.

CHAPTER II

Preparing a Criminal Case for Trial

When the prosecuting attorney in a great criminal trial arises to open the case to the impanelled jury, very few, if any, of them have the slightest conception of the enormous expenditure of time, thought and labor which has gone into the preparation of the case and made possible his brief and easily delivered speech.  For in this opening address of his there must be no flaw, since a single misstated or overstated fact may prejudice the jury against him and result in his defeat.  Upon it also depends the jury’s first impression of the case and of the prosecutor himself—­no inconsiderable factor in the result.  In a trial of importance its careful construction with due regard to what facts shall be omitted (in order to enhance their dramatic effect when ultimately proven) may well occupy the district attorney every evening for a week.  But if the speech itself has involved study and travail, it is as nothing compared with the amount required by that most important feature of every criminal case—­the selection of the jury.

For a month before the trial, or whenever it may be that the jury has been drawn, every member upon the panel has been subjected to an unseen scrutiny.  The prosecutor, through his own or through hired sleuths, has examined into the family history, the business standing and methods, the financial responsibility, the political and social affiliations, and the personal habits and “past performances” of each and every talesman.  When at the beginning of the trial they, one by one, take the witness-chair (on what is called the voir dire) to subject themselves to an examination by both sides as to their fitness to serve as jurors in the case, the district attorney probably has close fit hand a rather detailed account of each, and perchance has great difficulty in restraining a smile.  When some prospective juror, in his eagerness either to serve or to escape, deliberately equivocates in answer to an important question as to his personal history.