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Communications in regard to the contents of the Magazine should be addressed to the Editor, Thos. Tileston Baldwin, 1038 Exchange Building, Boston, Mass. The Editor will be glad to receive contributions of articles of moderate length upon subjects of in terest to the profession; also anything in the way of legal antiquities or curiosities, facetice, anecdotes, etc. In the March number of The Green Bag will appear an article of considerable length entitled "The Proceedings in the case of Rear Admiral Schley and in other Inquiries by Military Courts," by Charles. E. Grinnell, Esq., of Boston, whose interesting analyses of the Bram case,1 the Maybrick case,2 the Eastman case,3 and other cases,4 will be remembered. Mr. Grinnell will com ment upon the Schley Court of Inquiry from a legal point of view. Not undertaking to argue the facts of the case, he will discuss the differ ence between the methods of Courts of Inquiry and those of Civil Courts, the reasons for such methods, and their comparative values in ar riving at knowledge of facts and trustworthy opinions. Systems of military order will be compared with principles and practices of legal justice. Relations of open Inquiries to political expediency will be considered. Judge M. Arnold, of Philadelphia, the trial justice in the Holmes murder trial, which was the subject of a recent article 5 in The Green Bag, in a recent letter writes as follows concern ing that interesting case : "I thank you sincerely for the Green Bag, with Mr.Chapin's excellent article on the Holmes case, which afforded me much pleasure in read ing it. He fell into a trivial error when he quoted the official title of the Court as being in and for the city of Philadephia, when it should be city 1 The Green Bag, April, 1897. 2 The IIan^ard Law Rcvic-a', February, 1900. 3 "Eastman's Word Taken,'"— The Boston Herald, May 12, 1901; and " Anglo-Saxon Legal Justice,"— The Boston Evey'ing Transcript, May 25, 1901. '"Modern Murder Trials and Newspapers," — The Atlantic Monthly, November, 1901. s " A Study in the Fine Art of Murder," by H. Gerald Cbapin, The Green Bag, vol. xiii, p. 515; November, 1901.
and county, although the word city is superflu ous, while the word county is material, the Court being a County Court and there being no city Criminal Court. "There are some things in the case which may be read between the lines by those who were present at the trial, while the cursor}' reader would not notice them. For instance, the belief of the prosecution was that Pitezel was drunk on the morning he was poisoned, but could not prove it. There was proof that he bought a quantity of whisky the night before, and took it home, but nothing beyond that. The prisoner asked the coroner's physician whether he was prepared to give a professional opinion that onehalf hour before he died or at the time of his death, he was not in an insensible condition from the excessive use of alcohol. The question and the manner of putting it, as well as the person who asked it, convinced every one present that Pitezel was drunk, and that Holmes took advantage of his condition to chloroform him; p. 151. On p. 369 he, while examining Miss Yoke (his wife, although their marriage was unlawful) proved that he was away from home from tenthirty to three or four o'clock the day of the murder, and that when he came back he was nervous, prostrated, and excited, his underwear being damp from perspiration, and that he told her they would leave that evening, although they had not agreed on leaving before he left home that morning." The serious character of the defects of the "Proposed Penal Code of the United States" are increasingly apparent the more the bill is studied. In our January number, Mr. Speranza pointed out serious objections to the proposed legislation; and opposition to the bill is rein forced by the recently published report of a committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. Referring to Chapters I to X of the proposed code, which are supposed to revise title LXX. —
