Ex-convict

“ A shyster lawyer need but to keep his client off the stand and he can saturate the jury's mind with any facts concerning the defendant's respectability and history which his imagination is powerful enough to supply. On such occasions an ex-convict with no relatives may become a "noble fellow, who, rather than have his family name tainted by being connected with a criminal trial, is willing to risk even conviction"—"a veteran of the glorious war which knocked the shackles from the slave"—"the father of nine children"—"a man hounded by the police." ”

“ The only places where the ex-convicts get the icy mitt are pink teas and prayer meetings. An ex-convict should work all day and then spend his evenings at the library, feeding his mind—then he is safe. ”

“ The ex-convict is at your feet; but he woos you in the teeth of danger; he does not forget that. There is little time to be lost in idle play. We have had all the romance years ago; we come now to the stern reality. ”

“ Of course, he is a marked man and a watched man with the police. When a crime is committed and the offender is not found, the ex-convict is rounded up with others of his class to see, perchance, if he is not the offender that is wanted. ”

“ He endeavors by telling falsehoods to lay the foundation for future good conduct. The average man does not wish to employ an ex-convict, because the average man has no confidence in the reforming power of the penitentiary. He believes that the convict who comes out is worse than the convict who went in. He knows that in the penitentiary the heart of this man has been hardened—that he has been subjected to the torture of perpetual humiliation—that he has been treated like a ferocious beast ”

“ Whether he goes for one or five years, for all the future he is set down as an ex-convict. People do not stop to inquire as to the length of his sentence. The main question is: Was he in the penitentiary? If so, he wears the mark of Cain—the stamp of disgrace. Not so, if he simply has been in jail. There are a great many young men, while surrounded by bad company, yield to temptation and commit crime. A dose of jail service will do them as much good as a year in the penitentiary. After they get out they do not feel the disgrace so keenly, and there is some hope for their reformation. ”

“ The detective raised a hand in protest.
'Pardon my interruption, sir, but I really should advise you not to prosecute.'
'Indeed! Why?'
'It is this way. If you prosecute, you get the man his term of imprisonment. A year, probably. Well and good. But then what happens? After his sentence has run out, he comes out of prison an ex-convict. Tries to get work. No good. Nobody will look at him. Asks for a job. People lock up their spoons and shout for the police. ”

“ He pleaded with tears in his eyes, that the fifteen years of faithful service should have lived down that one offense of his youth, but mercy was not shown him and the head lines of the papers on the following day announced in the most glaring type the "Ex-convict's" testimony. Faithfulness, honesty, courage were all as nothing compared to the [Pg 138] stain which years of suffering and hard labor in prison ought to have obliterated. ”

“ The pardon, however, did not include employment, and the ex-convict found the world hard and unsympathetic. No one would have anything to do with a man whose record included a murder and several violent assaults, and he was starving when it occurred to him that he might be able to make something out of Bastien's confession. He, thereupon, called on the chief of police, and offered to tell him where the body of the133 widow was provided he was given five hundred francs when his statement had been tested. ”

“ Suppose a man to be convicted of a crime of which he is innocent. As he has been convicted, the evidence, though fallacious, is overwhelming. He is sentenced to a term of imprisonment—say penal servitude. He serves his sentence and is in due course discharged. He is now free; but the conviction stands against him. He is a discharged convict. His name is in the prison books, his photograph and his finger-prints are in the Habitual Criminals’ Register. He is a marked man for life. ”

“ Better that some guilty homicides should be left to the sure retribution of God than that one innocent person should be consigned to the unmerited ignominy of a capital conviction and a shameful death.
“If, from the evidence before you, you feel assured of the prisoner’s guilt, it is your duty to convict her; but if any—the least degree of uncertainty disturb your judgment—it is your duty to acquit her. English law recognizes no such middle course as that taken by the jury in rendering their verdict in the celebrated case of Madeleine Smith. ”

“ Our convicts are nursed in the lap of luxury as compared with the condition of the prisoners at the beginning of the century. But then the criminal is the spoiled child of the age, to be petted, and pampered, and excused.
A convict with one eye, his nose smashed on one side, with coarse fleshy lips, was accosted by the chaplain. ”

“ Gentlemen, your whole concern should be to do your duty, and leave consequences to take care of themselves. You will receive the law from the court. Your verdict, it is true, may endanger the prisoner's life, but then it is to save other lives. If the prisoner's guilt has been shown and proved beyond all reasonable doubt, you will convict him. ”

“ On the contrary, a pardon is attended with a good number of formalities, and without one I do not think that any convict would have been allowed to quit the vessel. In that class of prisoners, leave of absence on parole, or a "day rule," would have been something peculiar enough to make the turnkey ask, "Where did you get this?" In short, a convict who made his escape as described must be as extraordinary a person as the strong American, who could sit in a basket and lift himself upon a table by the handles. ”

“ Whatever disposition he may show, or whatever efforts he may make, upon his release, to lead a proper life,—all will be neutralized, almost inevitably, by the knowledge of the fact that he has been a convict in the penitentiary; and some of those who have been his fellow-convicts, of a more hardened experience in crime, will be constantly on the watch to lead him astray, and with an influence of great power. ”

“ One of the heaviest parts of a convict's punishment, offering also the severest hindrance to his reformation, is that he has it not in his power to shake himself so entirely free from old companions as that they shall never enter his doors; he cannot, if he would, in a penal settlement stand altogether aloof from the class with which crime has identified him, and the meeting of former associates ends too often in the hatching of new offences. Then comes reconviction, and the wife must shift for herself whilst the husband spends a fresh term in jail. ”

“ By eloquence, readiness of wit, and adroit flattery of the jury he contrived to secure his acquittal in the face of the open hostility of the judge—a unique achievement at a time when the condemnation of prisoners whom the authorities wished to convict was a mere matter of course. ”

“ If in the wisdom of the members of the legislature the crime calls for imprisonment in the penitentiary, then the ordinary sentences run one, two, five, ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty years, and life, according to the hazard of the legislature, the whim of the court, the gamble of the jury, or the feeling and means of expression of the unthinking and pitiless crowd who awe courts and juries with their cries for vengeance.
Neither does punishment affect any two alike; the sensitive and proud may suffer more from a day in jail or even from conviction than another would suffer from a year. ”

“ Will not the man who accuses himself, yet more readily accuse others? Besides, is it just to torment one man for the crime of another? May not the accomplices be found out by the examination of the witnesses, or of the criminal; from the evidence, or from the nature of the crime itself; in short, by all the means that have been used to prove the guilt of the prisoner? The accomplices commonly fly when their comrade is taken. The uncertainty of their fate condemns them to perpetual exile, and frees society from the danger of further injury ”

“ Objections are made to this provision as being a departure from the law as it stood before, and as being an additional punishment to the prisoner, and therefore ex post facto. It is obvious that it confers upon the warden of the penitentiary a power which had heretofore been solely confided to the court and is therefore a departure from the law as it stood when the crime was committed. ”

“ A convict-absconder, whose hands were hard with menial service, and whose back was scarred with the lash, could never be received among the gently nurtured. Let him lay claim to his name and rights, what then? He was a convicted felon, and his name and rights had been taken from him by the law. Let him go and tell Maurice Frere that he was his lost cousin. He would be laughed at. Let him proclaim aloud his birth and innocence, and the convict-sheds would grin, and the convict overseer set him to harder labour. ”

“ Would a man in his senses, gentlemen, not have removed, at any rate, this fatal evidence of his guilt? Would a man in his senses not have endeavoured to disguise himself, and to conceal the money he had stolen? Gentlemen of the jury, I have perfect confidence in your coming to a just decision respecting this most unhappy affair. Weighing well the antecedents of the prisoner, and the circumstances of the crime, I can have not one shadow of a doubt that your verdict will be to the effect that the wretched man before you is, alas! ”

“ Counsel for such cases habitually appeal to the emotions of the jury, and ask what they would have done under like circumstances. Even conviction may not be uncomforable; take the case of a young White in Florida, who killed a policeman, was sentenced to eighteen months’ imprisonment, was then hired out as a convict by his uncle at fifteen dollars a month, and paraded the streets at his pleasure. ”

“ Many of our states, however, are adopting the indeterminate sentence with provisions that the prisoner may be released on parole. There is a great difference in the attitude of the public towards the individual released and known by society as a discharged convict and the individual released on parole. ”

“ The counsel for the prosecution, influenced by motives of humanity, and fully impressed with the prisoner’s guilt on both charges, urged the counsel for the prisoner to advise his client to plead guilty, undertaking that his life should be spared, but observing at the same time that his social position, which was superior to that of the other prisoners, would make it impossible to extend the mercy of the Crown to him unless he manifested a due sense of his offences by foregoing the chance of escape. “You know,” said they, “how rarely an alibi obtains credit with a jury. ”

“ I did prepare with my own hands all the food and drink of which they partook—”
“Prisoner, prisoner,” said Squire Upton, in a tone of great sympathy, for—despite the conclusive evidence against her, it was impossible to look into her innocent eyes without feeling a doubt of her supposed guilt, and wishing to give her the benefit of that doubt—“prisoner, I must again earnestly warn you that you are fatally criminating yourself, a thing that the law does not require you to do. Justice affords even to the most guilty the opportunity of acquittal, which the criminal is not bound to destroy.” ”

“ If a man receives, harbors, or otherwise assists to elude justice, one whom he knows to be guilty of a felony, he becomes thereby an accessory after the fact in the felony. 1 Bishop’s Crim. Law 487. Obviously, a man to be an accessory after the fact must be aware of the guilt of his principal; and, therefore, one can not become an accessory by helping to escape a prisoner convicted of felony, unless he has notice of the conviction, or at least of the felony committed. ”

“ I would even allow him to urge upon the jury, not only in such a case, but in every case where the punishment might be death, to bear in mind, that no matter how perfectly satisfied they may be of the prisoner’s guilt; still, if he has not been proved guilty, by unquestionable evidence, or by unimpeachable witnesses, according to law, they are bound by their oaths to return a verdict of not guilty; and if they do not, they themselves are guilty of murder. ”

“ They are grateful to the defendant and his family, and impress the latter with the fact that the lawyer is doing everything in his power to get his client off.
It is now the judge's soul is tried. How far may he temper justice with mercy? How far are the interests of the public and the prisoner irreconcilable? Many youthful offenders, who have not hitherto been convicted, escape with a suspended sentence or a commitment to a reformatory—even when found guilty of crimes as serious as manslaughter or robbery. Little mercy is shown to old offenders. ”

“ Your readiness to confess your guilt—the testimony of your fellow prisoner in your behalf—the recommendation of the jury—and the intercession of the prosecutor, however, weigh with the court. Still a severe punishment must be awarded you; for if we were to admit the plea that a person between twenty and thirty is not responsible for his or her actions, justice would in numerous cases be defeated, and crime would find constant apologies and extenuation. The sentence of the court is that you be imprisoned for the space of two years in her Majesty's gaol of Newgate. ”

“ The convict, if he obtains a reversal of the judgment, and is again convicted on a second trial, may be sentenced to a new term of imprisonment, and the court is not bound to regulate the second sentence in view of the fact that the convict has already suffered imprisonment under the first sentence. ”