As to the first, it is fairly safe to say that a woman is much
more likely to win a verdict in a civil court or to persuade
the jury that the prisoner is guilty in a criminal case than a
man would be in precisely similar circumstances. In most
criminal prosecutions for the ordinary run of felonies little
injustice is likely to result from this. There is one
exception, however, where juries should reach conclusions with
extreme caution, namely, where certain charges are brought by
women against members of the opposite sex.
Here the jury is apt to leap to a conclusion, rendered easy by
the attractiveness of the witness and the feeling that the
defendant is a "cur anyway," and ought to be "sent up."
The difficulty of determining, even in one's office, the true
character of a plausible woman is enhanced tenfold in the
court-room, where the lawyer is generally compelled to proceed
upon the assumption that the witness is a person of
irreproachable life and antecedents. Almost any young woman
may create a favorable impression, provided her taste in dress
be not too crude, and, even when it is so, the jury are not
apt to distinguish carefully between that which cries to
Heaven and that which is merely "elegant.
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