JEROME THE LAWYER Jury (and there were some eighty of them) pleaded guilty, was convicted before a jury, or fled the jurisdiction. It is this independence of thought and fearlessness of action which characterize Jerome as a lawyer. The result has been a comprehensive development of the criminal law within his four years of office. Indeed, one member of the Bar has facetiously re marked, that since Jerome's incumbency, "acts have become crimes which have hitherto been regarded as virtues." Yet with all his originality and resource fulness of mind, he is rarely misled by any mere impulse or desire to prosecute. Time and again the press have clamored for prose cution, of corporations and individuals which Jerome as a lawyer believed to be beyond the scope of the criminal law. By yielding to his natural inclinations and to public pressure he might well have added to his reputation as a fearless official and gained hasty general commendation, but this he has firmly refused to do. When the New York Central terminal accident oc curred, the press instantly demanded the indictment of the corporation for man slaughter. The papers were filled with star ing headlines prophesying the sensational prosecutions of directors which Jerome would of course immediately initiate. But he disappointed them all. He knew that the corporation had been guilty of main taining a condition of affairs in the tunnel which did in fact amount to a public nuis ance. The accident in question might have resulted at any time from this condition, since the signals might have been obscured by smoke. But unfortunately for the yel low press, the accident, in point of fact, had been due not to the obscuring of signals, but to the failure of the engineer to observe them. Jerome, in the face of public opin ion, firmly refused to undertake the popular and spectacular prosecution of Mr. Depew, Mr. Vanderbilt, and the others, for man slaughter, and instead indicted and tried the negligent engineer. It is, however, true
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that the District Attorney believed that the directors should be indicted for maintaining a nuisance, and vainly tried to induce the Grand Jury to take action. His conduct in the case of the Metropolitan Street Railway was equally conservative. Persons who are prone to regard him as a seeker after noto riety rather than as a lawyer, would do well to investigate the facts. Jerome asks for no indictments which in his opinion cannot be sustained in law and where the facts cannot be construed legally to constitute a crime. Only during his administration has the appeal work of the office been brought to its present state of efficiency, and it is a conservative statement to say that never before has the purely legal side of the ad ministration of criminal justice received so much attention from the prosecuting officer in New York County, and in this purely legal aspect of his labors Jerome is seen at his best. While he rarely takes part in the actual conduct of a case by examining witnesses or addressing the jury, he makes it a point to appear in person and argue the more difficult questions of law pre sented by demurrer or otherwise pending and throughout the more important trials. On such occasions, Jerome's knowledge of law and grasp of fact make him the domi nant figure in the court room. Without any waste of time or superfluity of words he seizes upon the salient point involved, shakes it free from the mass of irrelevant statement and specious argument in which it may be entangled, and in a few direct and oftentimes scathing sentences demonstrates the accuracy of his contention. On the other hand, if Jerome the lawyer thinks he is wrong he never hesitates to say so. "Give the devil his due and two more" is his principle, and this just as true whether the poor devil be in the right or in the wrong. But when Jerome has thought he was right the courts have usually agreed with him. At the beginning of Jerome's term, the appeal business necessarily involved cases
