In default of all else he may go “insane” just before the case is moved for trial.  This habit of the criminal rich when brought to book for their misdeeds is too well known to require comment.  All that is necessary is for a sufficient number of “expert” alienists to declare it to be their opinion that the defendant is mentally incapable of understanding the proceedings against him or of preparing his defence, and he is shifted off to a “sanitarium” until some new sensation occupies the public mind and his offences are partially forgotten.

In this way justice is often thwarted and the law cheated of its victim, but unless fortune favors him, sooner or later the indicted man must return for trial and submit the charge against him to a jury.  But if this happens, even if he be guilty, all hope need not be lost.  There are still “tricks of the trade” which may save him from the clutches of the law.

AT THE TRIAL

What can be done when at last the prisoner who has fought presistently for adjournment has been forced to face the witnesses against him and submit the evidence to a jury of peers?  Let us assume further that he has been “out on bail,” with plenty of opportunity to prepare his defence and lay his plans for escape.

When the case is finally called and the defendant takes his seat at the bar after a lapse of anywhere from six months to a year or more after his arrest, the first question for the district attorney to investigate is whether or no the person presenting himself for trial be in point of fact the individual mentioned in the indictment.  This is often a difficult matter to determine.  “Ringers”—­particularly in the magistrates’ courts—­are by no means unknown.  Sometimes they appear even in the higher courts.  If the defendant be an ex-convict or a well-known crook, his photograph and measurements will speedily remove all doubt upon the subject, but if he be a foreigner (particularly a Pole, Italian or a Chinaman), or even merely one of the homogeneous inhabitants of the densely-populated East Side of New York, it is sometimes a puzzling problem.  “Mock Duck,” the celebrated Highbinder of Chinatown, who was set free after two lengthy trials for murder, was charged not long ago with a second assassination.  He was pointed out to the police by various Chinamen, arrested and brought into the Criminal Courts building for identification, but for a long time it was a matter of uncertainty whether friends of his (masquerading as enemies) had not surrendered a substitute.  Luckily the assistant district attorney who had prosecuted this wily and dangerous Celestial in the first instance was able to identify him.