CURRENT LEGAL ARTICLES.
IN an article on "The Limitation of the Right of Appeal in Criminal Cases," in the Harvard Law Review for March, Nathan A. Smyth gives certain statistics relating to ap peals in criminal cases in New York county during the five years, 1898-1902, and then suggest how the right of appeal should be limited. He says: The review of the reversals, however, suggests a way by which the right of appeal may be greatly limited without going so far as to run the risk of committing substantial injustice. The fundamental theory upon which the suggestion about to be made is based, is that juries can be trusted. Our whole system is based on that theory, yet we have been far from consistent in follow ing it. There are certain errors which may be committed in the conduct of a trial which, if juries are trustworthy, we can trust the jury to correct. There are other errors which the jury cannot be supposed to cor rect. The present suggestion, in a word, is to limit the right of appeal to cases where error of the second sort is committed. No risk would be run in making it im possible to appeal on the ground that the verdict was against the weight of evidence because the jury is a more reliable tribunal than a higher court, so far as the facts are concerned. As for errors in judges' charges it is doubtful if, in cases where the testimony is prima facie sufficient to prove the crime, a verdict is ever unjustly influenced by such error. Juries do not convict unless they are convinced of moral guilt, and if the facts testified to make out a prima facie case of legal guilt, no wrong has been done by the verdict. So, too, any misconduct of the prosecuting attorney is more quickly de tected and resented by the jury than by any higher court. In two instances, however, error does substantial injustice which cannot be cor rected by the jury. These are, first, where the uncontradicted evidence for the People does not prove a crime under the law. The conviction in such a case indicates the jury's belief that the acts charged as a crime were
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done by the defendant—the jury is bound by the court's ruling that those acts constitute a crime against the law. The second case is where a defendant is wrongfully prevented from introducing evidence in his own behalf. He has not been given a fair chance to pre sent his side of the case, and the jury are bound to consider only what he has intro duced, and so cannot correct the error. Thus we come to the suggestion that ap peals from convictions be limited to cases— 1. Where it is claimed that the evidence submitted by the prosecution does not estab lish the crime prima facie. 2. Where it is claimed that material evi dence offered by the defendant has been im properly excluded. 3. Where the trial judge reserves some question of law which he considers doubtful and of importance. By so limiting the appeal most of the technical loopholes for escape would be closed and the number of appeals would be reduced. At the same time opportunity would be left to remedy any substantial in justice that is at all likely to occur. If some provision could be devised whereby in the third class mentioned the State could be made to bear the whole cost of appeal in the case of poor defendants, the greatest injus tice of the present system would almost en tirely disappear. "STATE Police Powers and Federal Prop erty Guarantees" are the subject of an in teresting paper by Charles C. Marshall in the Columbia Law Review for March. After pointing out the significance of the License Cases, Slavery Cases, Slaughter House Cases, and the Grain Elevator Case, as re gards State Police Powers—powers which the Supreme Court "for a hundred years has exalted above the constitution itself"— Mr. Marshall finds it "difficult to discover any basis for that rigid conception of prop erty which prevails in American life, for that widespread notion of Federal property guarantees ready to be invoked by the citizens of the States, for that conviction so deeply imbedded even in intelligent minds
