The first and second degrees are efforts to outwit a criminal. They would seldom entrap an innocent person. Moreover, the accused need not answer questions, and this should be the course pursued by any one accused of crime, no matter how innocent. The first and second degrees are admitted to exist; the third degree has been described, and, on the whole, I am inclined to approve of it, although unlawful. It has brought many criminals to justice; but I do not defend the _fourth degree_, which is the name I use, for the lack of a better one, to describe the present state of affairs existing in the office of the public prosecutor. It is a continuation of the others, after the affair reaches the hands of an Assistant District Attorney with an ambition for a record for securing convictions—one looking for a reputation. It is made possible by twin evils of recent birth: yellow journalism and expert testimony. Summed up, it is the use of slander and perjury. In the “fourth degree” the pen is mightier than the night stick—the victim is not pounded with the “locust,” but in the press. Like the fourth dimension of space, if there is one, this state of affairs is invisible; but invisible only because we will not observe. Permit me to prove the existence of this fourth degree. Time was, when trials in the criminal courts of this county were intended to determine the guilt or the innocence of the accused. All this is changed now; convictions must be obtained by every and any means, when money and reputations are to be made; and the secret methods of convicting innocent men constitute the fourth degree. Immediately upon arrest, or even before, public opinion is aroused against the suspect by inflammatory newspaper statements in which the victim is accused of crime; the presumption of innocence is no longer allowed him. His family is branded by the most contemptible calumnies; and the public is assured in every edition that the authorities have ample proof of the accused’s guilt, that new evidence is constantly pouring in, and that conviction is a certainty. During this trial in the newspapers, fake evidence is published; opinions of previous officials not noted for their over-blameless public lives are printed, experts are turned loose—all of them, of course, on one side—and this is kept up until it is believed that public opinion has been swayed against the victim. Eulogies on the generosity and fairness of the assistant prosecutor in charge are printed editorially (making certain the source from whence these articles emanate, for in our day, the District Attorney’s office has become a news agency for sensational journalism). In the manner affected by all savages, this red fire is burnt, tum-tums are beaten, stink-balls thrown to distract public attention from what is about to happen.