onduct of the attorney.[956]

Trial by Impartial Tribunal

Inasmuch as due process implies a tribunal both impartial and mentally
competent to afford a hearing, it follows that the subjection of a
defendant's liberty or property to the decision of a court, the judge of
which has a direct, personal, substantial pecuniary interest in
rendering a verdict against him, is violative of the Fourteenth
Amendment.[957] Compensating an inferior judge for his services only
when he convicts a defendant may have been a practice of long-standing,
but such a system of remuneration, the Court declared, never became "so
embedded by custom in the general practice either at common law or in
this country that it can be regarded as due process of law. * * *"[958]
However, a conviction before a mayor's court does not become
constitutionally defective by reason of the fact that the fixed salary
of the mayor is paid out of the fund to which the fines imposed by him
contribute.[959]

Obviously, the attribute of impartiality is lacking whenever the judge
and jury are dominated by a mob. "If the jury is intimidated and the
trial judge yields, and so that there is an actual interference with the
course of justice, there is, in that court, a departure from due process
of law. * * *"[960] But "if * * * the whole proceeding is a mask--* * *
[if the] counsel, jury and judge * * * [are] swept to the fatal end by
an irresistible wave of public passion, and * * * [if] the State Courts
failed to correct the wrong, neither perfection in the machinery for
correction nor the possibility that the trial court and counsel saw no
other way of avoiding an immediate outbreak of the mob can prevent"
intervention by the Supreme Court to secure the constitutional rights of
the defendant.[961]

Insofar as a criminal trial proceeds with a jury, it is part of the
American tradition to contemplate not only an impartial jury but one
drawn from a cross-section of the community. This has been construed as
requiring that prospective jurors be selected by court officials without
systematic and intentional exclusion of any group, even though it is not
necessary that every jury contain representatives of all the economic,
social, religious, racial, political, and geographical groups of the
community.[962]

Other Attributes of a Fair Trial

"Due process of law," the Supreme Court has observed, "requires that the
proceedings shall be fair, but fairness is a relative, n