determine whether or not this had actually occurred. While
the fact was established in the affirmative, the company now
destroys its slips in order not to have to repeat the
performance a second time.

Likewise, in the preparation of the Molineux case it became
important to demonstrate that the accused had sent a letter
under an assumed name ordering certain remedies. As a result,
one of the employees of the patent-medicine company spent
several months going over their old mail orders and comparing
them with a certain sample, until at last the letter was
unearthed. Of course, the district attorney had to pay for
it, and it was probably worth what it cost to the prosecution,
although Molineux's conviction was reversed by the Court of
Appeals and he was acquitted upon his second trial.

The danger is, however, that a prosecutor who has an unlimited
amount of money at his disposal may be led into expenditures
which are hardly justified simply because he thinks they may
help to secure a conviction. Nothing is easier than to waste
money in this fashion, and public officials sometimes spend
the county's money with considerably more freedom than they
would their own under similar circumstances.

The legitimate expenses connected with the preparation of
every important case are naturally large. For example,
diagrams must be prepared, photographs taken of the place of
the crime, witnesses compensated for their time and their
expenses paid, and, most important of all, competent experts
must be engaged. This leads us to an interesting aspect of