This antecedent public sentiment is fostered from day to day
until it has unconsciously permeated every corner of the
community. The juryman will swear that he is unaffected by
what he has read, but unknown to himself there are already
tiny furrows in his brain along which the appeal of the
defence will run.
In view of this deliberate perversion of truth and morals, the
euphemisms of a hard-put defendant's counsel when he pictures
a chorus girl as an angel and a coarse bounder as a St. George
seem innocent indeed. It is not within the rail of the
courtroom but within the pages of these sensational journals
that justice is made a farce. The phrase "contempt of court"
has ceased practically to have any significance whatever. The
front pages teem with caricatures of the judge upon the bench,
of the individual jurors with exaggerated heads upon
impossible bodies, of the lawyers ranting and bellowing,
juxtaposed with sketches of the defendant praying beside his
prison cot or firing the fatal shot in obedience to a message
borne by an angel from on high.
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