Defects in Our Criminal Procedure

Abstract

And we print them here to call attention to the real location of the blame for our slow progress. It is not entirely with the judges' indifference; these passages demonstrate that. It is with the Judiciary Committees of the Legislatures, and therefore with the bar as a whole, from whom the judiciary committees are selected, and with the people at large, who elect the lawyers in the Legislatures. The opinion of Judge Faris reminds the people of Missouri that the judges have more than once recommended changes of the law, and that no heed has been given by the Legislature. Anyone who has had to do with judiciary committees in legislatures can confirm this complaint. Take the Illinois Legislature as a recent example. A committee representing this Institute appeared before the Judiciary Committee, at the 1915 session, to argue in favor of a bill embodying a simple and obvious reform in the method of criminal trials upon a plea of insanity. The bill had been drafted after some years of consultation between eminent lawyers and physicians in various parts of the country; it had been approved by the American Medical Association and the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology; it was introduced by a leading member of the Legislature. But what was its reception? An obstructionist politician set upon it, poohpoohed the authors of the bill, ranted with cheap and irrelevant rhetoric, and persuaded a majority of his indifferent and narrow-minded colleagues that the reform measure was needless and over-radical. They emasculated the bill in committee, and what was left of it never reached a third reading. Such are the prospects nowadays, in too many Legislatures, for any proposal of reform of criminal procedure, however much needed,