Persons accused of serious crimes under federal law must be booked immediately before a United States Commissioner, as all crimes in the District, even those like assault, robbery, drunken driving, gambling, homicide, and rape, which elsewhere belong exclusively to the state, are federal matters here.
We gave you a rough idea of the volume of such criminal activities in the District. If those defendants had been arrested for the same offenses in states, they would be booked before a magistrate, a police court or a justice of the peace. There are none such in Washington other than the judges. The chief committing magistrate is the United States Commissioner, and he has no assistants. He not only performs the federal duties that U.S. Commissioners in other towns assume, but he also acts as a committing magistrate on all local felony charges in the District.
A U.S. Commissioner is not a judge. He is chosen by the local Federal bench. He serves without salary on a fee basis, but is limited by statute to a maximum of $9,400 a year, out of which he is required to pay office rent and stenographic expenses. The law permits a U.S. Commissioner to practice law on the side, and many in other jurisdictions do, but, because the D.C. office is the busiest in the country, he has no time to handle outside cases. The Commissioner is on duty 24 hours a day. There is no night court. He is it. Police awaken him at any hour of the night when they make important arrests or require warrants, and he is busy at hearings, setting bail, and presiding at arraignments all day.
When you get into the U.S. Attorney’s office you really see how things are loused up here. The rich Federal government apparently has dough to toss away everywhere else, but not in its own home. Of course, there are no faithful voters to be placated here. District Attorney Fay has only 34 men on his staff; his office is required to do more work than the entire Second Judicial Circuit, which includes the entire states of Vermont, Connecticut and the four districts of New York. His budget is so limited, most of his assistants receive only about $4,000 a year, and so the turnover is terrific; young men just out of law school go to work for him for a couple of years, then go out to make a living.
His office is so understaffed, there are not enough employes around to handle all complaints. It is possible to walk in and rifle the files at will. Many shyster lawyers often do that, killing the cases against their clients.
With such a small, unseasoned staff, it is no wonder the complaint desk in the U.S. Attorney’s office has been compared to “a bargain grocery counter.” It looks very much like one. It’s a long wooden shelf behind which a deputy district attorney stands and does business with plaintiffs, defendants, cops and lawyers across it. We noted that police may not enter their own complaints. They must bring them to the complaint bureau of the U.S. Attorney, before the hearing in court. It is then up to the U.S. Attorney’s office alone to determine whether the complaint will be made.
What happens is that, every day, thousands of people mill around in this complaint room. An onlooker can’t tell who are cops, lawyers or prisoners. When the arresting officer speaks to the deputy D.A., he does so in this cut-rate counter atmosphere, before the defendant and his lawyer. There is no privacy. The cop has to spill his case to the opposition. The defense lawyer then sets up an argument for dropping the case or reducing the charge. The officials are so harassed, they try to dispense with as much work as possible, which accounts for a hefty proportion of pinches that never get past this bureau.
Sometimes a youngster just out of law school is the “grocery clerk.” He makes such grave rulings as deciding not to prosecute a homicide charge. These law clerks arrogate to themselves the rights and prerogatives of the courts. When the D.A. decides to go before the grand jury, he usually asks for an indictment for only one offense, even if the accused has been charged with twenty. Elsewhere the custom is to indict on each count and try on one or two, leaving the others hanging over the defendant. That does not happen in Washington. After a prisoner is discharged and commits a crime in some other jurisdiction there is no record for probation officers there of other outstanding charges against him. That’s another reason why the professionals like to practice their trades in Washington.
There’s another booby-trap for the law. The prosecuting and corrective branches of the government don’t take the cops into their confidence when a prisoner is paroled. Elsewhere the police are notified when a parolee is back on the streets, so they can keep an eye on him. In Washington this is considered an invasion of the convict’s Constitutional rights.
If the defendant cannot make a deal before the complaint bureau, his lawyer is entitled on demand to get possession of the file on his case. The place is so understaffed, with not enough stenographers, that the only notes in these files are brief pencilled memoranda jotted down by the Deputy District Attorney. There is never a complete record. It is simple for defense lawyers to sneak some of the notes out of a file; they’ll never be missed, because no carbon copies are made. The overworked deputies can seldom remember what they wrote.
When the trial is scheduled, the deputy prosecutor seldom has an opportunity to read the files, even if there were complete data. Felony cases are often ground out in District Court at the rate of one an hour, including time out for picking juries. When a U.S. Attorney finishes with one case, the clerk hands him a folder on the next. That is the first time he ever saw it. Add to this the fact that the prosecutors do not work with the police in preparing a case, and you can see what “confusion twice confounded” means.
One of the most unusual features in the setup of the District government is the office of the Coroner. Until recently, this functionary, who need not be a physician, had no laboratory. What he has now is incomplete. He has no medical examiner and only a few low-paid researchers.
But he has a swell job, with a ten-year tenure and a courtroom better than the U.S. Commissioner’s. The present Coroner has virtually set himself up as a judge, with no authority in law, and is said by his critics to work with a gavel instead of a scalpel. He is one of the town’s most powerful functionaries.
Among the many strange quirks of local law is one which requires the Coroner at times to serve as a constable and to make levies. When the Coroner acts as a coroner, he holds court like a judge. And he thinks he is one, too. He has frequently discharged from custody persons accused of homicide, who had been held without bail by a U.S. Commissioner. He often sets bail and discharges defendants on bail, though there are no statutes authorizing such procedure, and he has so admitted under oath.
There have been instances when the Coroner has ruled a death was justifiable homicide and released the prisoner. Though this is no bar to subsequent indictment, prisoners often flee the jurisdiction before the prosecuting attorney knows what has happened. The law does not permit the coroner to discharge any person.
Coroner’s juries are impaneled by that official to meet his own preconceived ideas and prejudices. There is no requirement that a coroner’s juror must even be able to read or write. The salary is $7 a day, and the Coroner has his favorites. Some men served as many as 31 times last year.
The Coroner frequently discharges the accused prisoners on grounds of justifiable homicide, despite evidence that they had committed other crimes at the same time, such as carrying concealed weapons or selling narcotics. The coroner then shrugs his shoulders and says those things are none of his business.
There have been known instances of jury fixing. Through the proper channels, a charge of a death caused by reckless driving has been reduced to an innocuous misdemeanor or dismissed completely. One of the coroner’s deputies was a notorious abortionist who performed the autopsies on his own victims.
Too bad Boss Shepherd isn’t around today. He could appreciate what the backroom boys have done to the District government.
32. MONARCHS OF THE METROPOLIS
Since wood-cuts added to the native press the element of pictorial illustration, cartoonists have caricatured the American alderman. His heavy foot is on the bottom rung of the legislative ladder. The “gray wolves” of Chicago were known around the globe for venality, degradation and cold-blooded chicanery. The Tammany members of the board, the San Francisco, Kansas City, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Boston, Albany and St. Louis “city fathers” were in their most nefarious days gangsters, brothel-keepers and police court shysters, overlaid with a refined sprinkling of saloon-keepers.
That mixture does not reflect the complexion of our Congress. But when, twice a month, they sit as the Board of Aldermen of the city of Washington, they are about as dignified and statesmanlike as the city council of Peoria.