By all odds the greatest abuse in criminal trials lies in the
open disregard of professional ethics on the part of lawyers
who deliberately supply of themselves, in their opening and
closing addresses to the jury, what incompetent bits of
evidence, true or false, they have not been able to establish
by their witnesses. There is no complete cure for this, for
even if the judge rebukes the lawyer and directs the jury to
disregard what he has said as "not being in the evidence," the
damage has been done, the statement still lingering in the
jury's mind without any opportunity on the part of the
prosecutor to disprove it. There is no antidote for such
jury-poison. A shyster lawyer need but to keep his client off
the stand and he can saturate the jury's mind with any facts
concerning the defendant's respectability and history which
his imagination is powerful enough to supply. On such
occasions an ex-convict with no relatives may become a "noble
fellow, who, rather than have his family name tainted by being
connected with a criminal trial, is willing to risk even
conviction"--"a veteran of the glorious war which knocked the
shackles from the slave"--"the father of nine children"--"a
man hounded by the police.
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