Any one
opposing it may expect to be kept under strict surveillance in all his
movements, his mail will be violated, his words, written or overheard,
will be scrutinized for material that can be used against him. Nor is
the line drawn there. While I was in prison, I received the confidences
of many prisoners as to their own experiences, among others that of a
Maine boy who had been convicted of robbing a postoffice. He had been
arrested in the first instance as a vagrant, and while in the local jail
had been approached by a postoffice inspector who charged him with the
post-office crime. The boy had never been in the state in which the
crime was committed; but he was told that, if he would plead guilty to
it, he would be sent to Atlanta for a short term, whereas, should he
refuse, he could be kept in jail awaiting trial for a year, and would
then receive at least six months on the vagrancy charge. "Do as I tell
you, and I will see that you get off easy," the inspector, who posed as
a friend, told him. When he finally acquiesced, however, the judge
imposed on him a sentence of five years, the inspector having testified
that he was an old offender, implicated in many other crimes. The fact
was, of course, that the real perpetrators of this postoffice robbery
had not been caught, but it was expedient for the reputation and welfare
of the detectives that a perpetrator should be produced--if not the real
one, then one manufactured for the purpose.
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