That is the one case everybody knows about, the one the papers descant upon, the one that cheers the heart of the grafter and every criminal who can afford to pay a lawyer.
Yet the evil influence of the reversal of a conviction on appeal, however much it is to be deprecated, is as nothing compared with a deliberate acquittal of a guilty defendant by a reckless, sentimental, or lawless jury.

Few can appreciate as does a prosecutor the actual, practical and immediate effect of such a spectacle upon those who witness it.
Two men were seen to enter an empty dwelling-house in the dead of night.
The alarm was given by a watchman near by, and a young police officer, who had been but seven months on the force, bravely entered the black and deserted building, searched it from roof to cellar, and found the marauders locked in one of the rooms.

He called upon them to open, received no reply, yet without hesitation and without knowing what the consequences to himself might be, smashed in the door and apprehended the two men.

One was found with a large bundle of skeleton keys in his pocket and several candles, while a partially consumed candle lay upon the floor.

In the police court they pleaded guilty to a charge of burglary, and were promptly indicted by the grand jury.
At the trial they claimed to have gone into the house to sleep, said they had found the bunch of keys on the stairs, denied having the candles at all or that they were in a room on the top story, and asserted that they were in the entrance hall when arrested.
The story told by the defendants was so utterly ridiculous that one of the two could not control a grin while giving his version of it on the witness stand.