The Appellate
Division, First Department, and Court of Appeals in New York
are distinctly opposed to reversing criminal cases on
technical grounds and are prone to disregard trivial error
where the guilt of the defendant is clear. The writer can
recall no recent criminal case where the district attorney's
office has felt aggrieved at the action of the higher courts,
and on the contrary believes that their action is generally
based on broad principles of public policy and common-sense.
During the year 1905 the district attorney of New York County
defended forty-seven appeals from convictions in criminal
cases in the Appellate Division. Of these convictions only
three were reversed. He defended eighteen in the Court of
Appeals, of which only two were reversed. One of the writer's
associates computed that he had secured, during a four years'
term of office, twenty-nine convictions in which appeals had
been taken. Of these but two were reversed, one of them
immediately resulting in the defendant's re-conviction for the
same crime.
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