when he is actually on trial. First, how can the sympathies
of the jury be enlisted at the very start? Weeping wives and
wailing infants are a drug on the market. It is a friendless
man indeed, even if he be a bachelor, who cannot procure for
the purposes of his trial the services of a temporary wife and
miscellaneous collection of children. Not that he need swear
that they are his! They are merely lined up along a bench
well to the front of the court-room--the imagination of the
juryman does the rest.

A defendant's counsel always endeavors to impress the jury
with the idea that all he wants is a fair, open trial--and
that he has nothing in the world to conceal. This usually
takes the form of a loud announcement that he is willing "to
take the first twelve men who enter the box." Inasmuch as the
defence needs only to secure the vote of one juryman to
procure a disagreement, this offer is a comparatively safe one
for the defendant to make, since the prosecutor, who must
secure unanimity on the part of the jury (at least in New York
State), can afford to take no chances of letting an
incompetent or otherwise unfit talesman slip into the box.
Caution requires him to examine the jury in every important
case, and frequently this ruse on the part of the defendant
makes it appear as if the State had less confidence in its
case than the defence. This trick was invariably used by the
late William F. Howe in all homicide cases where he appeared
for the defence.

The next step is to slip some juryman into the box who is
likely for any one of a thousand reasons to lean toward the