nothing sacred about an archaic criminal procedure which in
some respects is less devised for the protection of the community than
for the exculpation of the guilty. The portals of liberty would not
fall down or the framers of the constitution turn in their graves if the
peremptory challenges allowed to both sides in the selection of a jury
were reduced to a reasonable number, or if persons found guilty of crime
after due process of law were compelled to stay in jail until their
appeals were decided, instead of walking the streets free as air under
a certificate of "reasonable doubt" issued by some judge who personally
knew nothing of the actual trial of the case. As things stand to-day, a
thief caught in the very act of picking a pocket in the night-time may
challenge arbitrarily the twenty most intelligent talesmen called to sit
as jurors in his case. Does such a practice make for justice? It is
even possible that the sacred bird of liberty would not scream if eleven
jurors, instead of twelve, were permitted to convict a defendant or set
him free, while the question of how far the right of appeal in criminal
cases might properly be limited or, in default of such limitation, how
far under certain conditions it might be correspondingly extended to the
community, is by no means purely academic.* It is also conceivable
that some means might be found to do away with the interminable
technicalities which can now be interposed on behalf of the accused to
prevent trials or the infliction of sentence after conviction.

* "Limitation of the Right of Appeal in Criminal Cases," by Nathan A.
Smythe, 17 Harvard Law Rev. 317 (1905).

Yet these considerations are of slight moment in contrast to that most
crying of all present abuses,--the domination of the court-room by the
press.* It is no fiction to say that in many cases the actual trial is
conducted in the columns of yellow journals and the defendant acquitted
or convicted purely in accordance with an "editorial policy." Judges,
jurors, and attorneys are caricatured and flouted. There is no evidence,
how ever incompetent, improper, or prejudicial to either side, excluded
by the judge in a court of criminal justice, that is not deliberately
thrust under the noses of the jury in flaring letters of red or purple
the moment they leave the court-room. The judge may charge one way in
accordance with the law of the land, while the editor charges the same
jury in double-leaded