E-text prepared by David Garcia, Jeannie Howse, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net/) +------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's Note: Some obvious typographical | | errors have been corrected in this text. For a list | | please see the bottom of the document. The one Greek | | word is transliterated and marked with +'s. | +------------------------------------------------------+ THE MAN IN COURT by FREDERIC DEWITT WELLS Justice, Municipal Court of New York City G.P. Putnam's Sons New York and London The Knickerbocker Press 1917 Copyright, 1917 by Frederic Dewitt Wells The Knickerbocker Press, New York To MY FRIEND CHARLES E. GOSTENHOFER OF THE NEW YORK BAR IN ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF HIS AID AND SUGGESTIONS THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED INTRODUCTION The author has tried to show the point of view of the ordinary man in a law court, as the various proceedings of a trial take shape before him. To the initiated, the whole book may seem too obvious; but it has not been written for them, but for those to whom these proceedings are unfamiliar. There are many who have a certain curiosity about the courts, and at the same time a real respect for justice, mingled with amusement at the panoplies and antiquated forms of legal procedure. F. DEW. W. NEW YORK, _January, 1917_. CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION iii I.--A NIGHT COURT 3 II.--THE CIVIL COURT 21 III.--THE JUDGE 39 IV.--THE ANXIOUS JURY 57 V.--THE STRENUOUS LAWYER 75 VI.--THE WORRIED CLIENT 93 VII.--PROGRAMS AND PLEADINGS 111 VIII.--PICKING THE JURY 129 IX.--OPENING THE CASE 149 X.--THE CONFUSED WITNESS 165 XI.--THOSE TECHNICAL OBJECTIONS 183 XII.--THE MOVEMENTS IN COURT 201 XIII.--ELOCUTION 219 XIV.--THE HEAVY CHARGE 235 XV.--THE TRUE VERDICT 251 XVI.--LOOKING BACKWARD 265 I A Night Court In the Night Court the drama is vital and throbbing. As the saddest object to contemplate is a play where the essentials are wrong, so in this court the fundamentals of the law are the cause of making it an uncomfortable and pathetic spectacle.