for crime a woman is one of the chief actors. The law
of the land compels the female prisoner to submit the question of
her guilt or innocence to twelve individuals of the opposite sex; and
permits the female complainant to rehearse the story of her wrongs
before the same collection of colossal intellects and adamantine hearts.

The first thing the ordinary woman hastens to do if she be summoned to
appear in a court of justice is not, as might be expected, to think over
her testimony or try to recall facts obliterated or confused by time,
but to buy a new hat; and precisely the same thing is true of the female
defendant called to the bar of justice, whether it be for stealing a
pair of gloves or poisoning her lover.

Yet how far does the element of sex defeat the ends of justice? To
answer this question it is necessary to determine how far juries are
liable to favor the testimony of a woman plaintiff merely because she
is a woman, and how far sympathy for a woman arraigned as a prisoner is
likely to warp their judgment.

As to the first, it is fairly safe to say that a woman is much more
likely to win a verdict in a civil court or to persuade the jury
that the prisoner is guilty in a criminal case than a man would be in
precisely similar circumstances. In most criminal prosecutions for the
ordinary run of felonies little injustice is likely to result from this.
There is one exception, however, where juries should reach conclusions
with extreme caution, namely, where certain charges are brought by women
against members of the opposite sex.

Here the jury is apt to leap to a conclusion, rendered easy by the
attractiveness of the witness and the feeling that the defendant is a
"cur anyway," and ought to be "sent up."

The difficulty of determining, even in one's office, the true character
of a plausible woman is enhanced tenfold in the court-room, where the
lawyer is generally compelled to proceed upon the assumption that the
witness is a person of irreproachable life and antecedents. Almost any
young woman may create a favorable impression, provided her taste in
dress be not too crude, and, even when it is so, the jury are not apt to
distinguish carefully between that which cries to Heaven and that which
is merely "elegant."

When the complaining witness is a woman who has merely lost money
through the acts of the defendant, the jury are not so readily moved
to accept her story in toto as when the crime charged is