Assignment of Lawyers to Criminal Cases suits in equity, except applications for in junctions and arguments on demurrers, and also with power to act as masters in divorce proceedings. "The law should be so framed,"
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he declares, "as not to interfere with any powers the courts now exercise, but merely to provide assistance in the administration of justice."
The Assignment of Prominent Lawyers to Criminal Cases FOLLOWING a custom adopted recently in the New York General Sessions of assigning prominent lawyers to defend pris oners charged with murder, too poor to employ counsel for themselves, Judge Malone on Sept. 24 called upon William B. Hornblower, De Lancey Nicoll, and Samuel Untermyer to conduct the defense in three murder cases. A meeting of judges had been called and letters were sent to many of the most able lawyers in the city, asking them if they would be willing occasionally to take criminal cases on assignment. A goodly number volunteered and a list was drawn up of about one hundred and twenty-five lawyers on whom the judges could call. Samuel Untermyer, who was assigned to defend an Italian woman charged with killing her husband, commended the Judge for this action, and said he would accept the assignment :— I shall certainly accept the assignment. I can conceive of nohigherormore important professional duty, and it never occurred to me for a moment to try to evade it. It is a mistake to suppose that the busy men of the bar are so absorbed in the defense of private interests that they have become callous to their sworn duty as lawyers. "Such talk from a man who can and does command very large fees," says the Hartford Courant, "is wholesome and may be expected to be helpful in bringing about a better state of affairs. It has long been notorious that rich men accused of crime could keep their cases before the courts for a long time. That many poor men, especially in the great cities, like New York and Chicago, were convicted after trials in which their rights were inade quately defended has been evident to those who have given the matter serious thought." The New York Press takes a more cynical view of "the generosity of these gentlemen in assuming a professional obligation they might have gone on shirking," and adds:—
"We think it only fair that the poor culprit should have as good a chance to beat the law as the wealthy one. If the able attorneys who take up the fight for obscure and friendless murderers will exhaust their ingenuity in the raising of technicalities and the fighting of appeals, they will sacrifice many thousands of dollars they might be earning in fees from litigious clients able to pay handsomely." Mr. Untermeyer also said:— If the criminal bar of this city is in a shocking condition we lawyers are to blame. It is only with us, and principally in New York City, that the flower of the bar has been drawn away from the higher sphere of advocacy by the temptation of money, to become highly paid clerks to financiers and too often to assist them in keeping prayerfully within the law. As soon as we realize that the defense of life, liberty and reputation is more im portant to the community than the mere champion ship of money interests, there will be a change for the better. In every civilized country except our own the leaders of the bar are proud to be selected to defend life, liberty and reputation, while, strange to say, it has grown to be almost a re proach in this city to find a man engaged in the practice of criminal law, however upright and able he may be. As a result we are to-day, of all the great cities of the world, without a recognized leader at the criminal bar. What a contrast to the days when men like Hamilton, Webster, Beach and Fullerton were proud of the distinc tion! "What is true of New York," comments the Baltimore News, "is largely true in almost every large city in the North and, to a less degree, in the South. There is not so wide and inviting a field in civil practice in the South as in the North, while, on the other hand, there are more criminal cases. The eloquence of leaders of the bar in the South who made their reputation in the con duct of criminal cases still lingers in the ears of Southerners." The ambition to imitate their example "has not yet entirely died out, consequently the criminal bar of the South is not generally subject" to the above reproach.
