The lawyers for the defence, therefore, prepare long statements of what they either believe or pretend to believe to be the law.

These statements embrace all the legal propositions, good or bad, favorable to their side of the case.

If they can induce the judge to follow these so much the better for their client, for even if they are not law it makes no difference, since the State has no appeal from an acquittal in a criminal case, no matter how much the judge has erred.

In the same way, but not in quite the same fashion, the district attorney prepares "requests to charge," but his desire for favorable instructions should be, and generally is, curbed by the consideration that if the judge makes any mistake in the law and the defendant is convicted he can appeal and upset the case.

Of course, some prosecutors are so anxious to convict that they will wheedle or deceive a judge into giving charges which are not only most inimical to the prisoner, but so utterly unsound that a reversal is sure to follow; but when one of these professional bloodhounds is baying upon the trail all he thinks of is a conviction--that is all he wants, all the public will remember; to him will be the glory; and when the case is finally reversed he will probably be out of office.