[Digalog-admin] {Spam?} He very lowest class, at the bar of justice is rare. The number of ca

Thu Jan 14 17:00:22 CET 2010

R secrets locked in their own breasts. The impulse to confession is
universal, particularly in women. Egotism has some part in this, but the
chief element is the desire for companionship. Criminals have a horror
of dying under an alias. The dignity of identity appeals even to the
tramp. This impulse leads oftentimes to the most unnecessary and
suicidal disclosures. The murderer who has planned and executed a
diabolical homicide and who has retired to obscurity and safety will
very likely in course of time make a clean breast of it to some one whom
he believes to be his friend. He wants to "get it off his chest," to
talk it over, to discuss its fine points, to boast of how clever he was,
to ask for unnecessary advice about his conduct in the future, to have
at least one other person in the world who has seen his soul's
nakedness. The interesting feature of such confessions from a legal
point of view is that, no matter how circumstantial they may be, they
are not usually of themselves sufficient under our law to warrant a
conviction. The admission or confession of a defendant needs legal
corroboration. This corroboration is often very difficult to find, and
frequently cannot be secured at all. This provision of the statutes is
doubtless a wise one to prevent hysterical, suicidal, egotistical, and
semi-insane persons from meeting death in the electric chair or on the
gallows, but it often results in the guilty going unpunished.
Personally, I have never known a criminal to confess a crime of which he
was innocent. The nearest thing to it in my experience is when one
criminal, jointly guilty with another and sure of conviction, has drawn
lots with his pal, lost, confessed, and in the confession exculpated his
companion. In the police organization of almost every large city there
are a few men who are genuinely gifted for the work of detection. Such
an one was Guiseppe Petrosino, a great detective, and an honest,
unselfish, and heroic man, who united indefatigable patience and
industry with reasoning powers of a high order. The most thrilling
evening of my life was when I listened before a crackling fire in my
library to Joe's story of the Van Cortlandt Park murder, the night
before I was going to prosecute the case. Sitting stiffly in an
arm-chair, his ugly moon-
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