So far so good; we can afford to stand by a system which in
the long run has served us fairly well. But an occasional
evil, an evil which when it occurs is productive of great harm
and serves to give color to the popular opinion of criminal
law, begins only when the lawyers have had their opportunity
for elocution. At the conclusion of the charge the
defendant's attorney proceeds to put the judge through what
is familiarly known as "a course of sprouts." He makes
twenty or thirty "requests to charge the jury" on the most
abstract propositions of law which his fertile mind can
devise,--relevant or irrelevant, applicable or inapplicable
to the facts,--and the judge is compelled to decide from the
bench, without opportunity for reflection, questions which the
attorney has labored upon, perchance, for weeks. If he
guesses wrong, the lawyer "excepts" and the case may be
reversed on appeal. This is not a test of the defendant's
guilt or innocence, but a test of the abstract learning and
quickness of the presiding judge.

It is generally believed that appellate courts are prone to
reverse criminal cases on purely technical grounds. Whether
this belief be well founded or ill, its wide acceptance as
fact is fertile in bringing the law into disrepute.* Justice
to be effective must be not only sure but swift. An "iron
hand" cannot always compensate for a "leaden heel".


*Cf. "Criminal Law Reform," G.W. Alger, "The Outlook," June,
1907. Also article having same title in "Moral Overstrain,"