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Show False identification, too, led to the incarceration of James W. Preston, of Los Angeles, Cal., for the robbery and shooting of Mrs. Dick R. Parsons in her Los Angeles home on October 18, 1924. On the evening of the crime, Mrs. Parsons was sitting in the living room playing the piano when a masked individual entered the house and held her up. When she- screamed, he' .fired a slug into her back and fled. Police investigating the case, picked up Preston as a possible suspect. They also found a set of fingerprints on the door screen. Somehow it leaked out in court that the prints were those of the accused) although the matter was never formally introduced into evidence. Mrs. Parsons, however, had sufficiently recovered to testify and she positively identified Preston as her assailant. Subsequently, Professor Edwin M. Borchard of the Yale Law School interested himself in,.the case and after a study of the fingerprints stated that they could not possibly be those of the imprisoned man. While Preston sweated it out in San iQuentin, serving an 11 years to life term, police reopened the investigation and finally arrested a Los Angeles criminal known as the "Weasel," who turned out to be the real owner of Preston was pardoned by then Governor Richardson in 1926 after serving two years. The Campbell and Preston cases point up another factor in proseunjust imprisonment which Daru calls "conviction-happ- y .. . cution." Let s do away with the adding machine prosecutors," lie says, d of the district attorneys who are in a high record of convictions than im Justice. Let the public know that Justice cannot be measured in numbers of convictions; that all too often a high percentage of convictions' means a high percentage of injustice." Take the case of J. B. Brown, a Florida railway brakeman, who unexpectedly took a trip on another kind of a railway the legal one and it led him right to the doorway of deaths Accused of the murder of a locomotive engineer," Brown was convicted in Jig time. The gallows was erected and on the appointed day, he stood with the noose around his neck to hear the reading of the death warrant. Ironically, it was a legal error that saved him. The clerk of the court had inadvertently filled in the name of the' foreman of the Jury instead of that of the accused. The execution had to be called off and the sentence commuted to life Imprisonment because, under English Common Law, a man's life cannot be placed twice, in Jeopardy. Twelve weary years went by in the Florida State Penitentiary and Brown had lost hope of ever seeing freedom again, when another man .confessed to the murder. Physically disabled and' was to a world that had all but forgotten. released destitute, he' . the-prin- ts. : "more-intereste- r From these "few cases out of many, it is clear that from stockbroker to farm-han- d, no one is safe from the peril of unjust imprisonment. Of course, it is equally obvious that courts cannot be infallible. But the real tragedy lies in the fact that redress is usually long in coming while the innocent man must sit and watch the years melt away waiting for the wrong to be righted and never sure that it will be. aftttm cat w Orayfut by Emil Zola at A fomowt - Wi of jUfrW wilt'i mnd. - - One answer is to grease ' up the wheels of court procedure. In many states, long delays are actually required by law before a retrial can be held even where the evidence points conclusively, to Innocence. Many lawyers feel that a case of this sort should have priority over all other business; that the state i&elf is committing a crime by keeping an innocent man behind bars. Another problem, which convicts have is securing proper legal aid wnlle they are imprisoned. Legal aid societies in the various states work valiantly but do not have the" proper facilities for speedy action. And not all, innocent prisoners have a Mowery, a Dam, or Borchard to go to bat for them. The answer. Daru believes, is to provide a qualified stall attorney at every major penal institution. To convicts, he says, professional services are as important as proper lood and medical care. legal Tnnhllltit n thaiv iocAe nHth nmrTnt QttnrrtHB a'hl! they are in Jail not only leads to injustices but also to dangerous mental frustrations of the sort which incite prison violence. .Lastly, and perhaps most important of all, the possible imprisonment of an innocent man, with all aits mental torture, with the hardship it brings to his family, is matter which judges, jurors, prosecutors, lawyers and law enforcement officers must weigh deep in their own consciences. No price is too great to pay . to keep a guiltless man from punishment. Some years ago, commemorating the twenty-fift- h anniversary of its Code of Ethics, the New York County Bar association invited Daru to speak: He said: "If, when another quarter of a century in the history of this association nas passea, just one personan oe iouna wno was ' saved from an unjust accusation because-o-f a principle which was stated in our Code, I will feel that we did not labor in vain .. If ,one lawyer has been saved the heartache of a misstep, I shall be happy." . y flit-iic- c How many innocent men are rotting in our prisons with no one to listen to their fyleas no one to give them comfort or legal aid. ThiU,cowfid criminal. tor conftdnc nan, tNutdlna with rtram Campbali (right), th Imm cot man hm fortW to paaa' years in (ail bafor k cMtonW to ha crime which pvt Caspbi bKind ban. AWx A 1 J. wrrh Bartraai Campbell (Tin family for Hto fire tima. 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