REAL MURDER.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 260, 2 November 1929, Page 2 (Supplement)

REAL MURDER.

Newspapers have made us acquainted with the unsatisfactory processes of the American Criminal Courts, the travesty of justice therein perpetrated, and the loose and careless proceedings of police, counsel and judges. In "Ten Real Murder Mysteries," by Sidney Sutherland (Putnam) there are such criminal cases as the British Courts would have promptly terminated by legitimate methods, unaffected by the popularity or wealth of the persons involved, but in America there seems to be unlimited "graft" as well as a weakness of principle. Time after time murderers are allowed to escape justice, not because there is no sure evidence to convict, but because there is so clumsy a handling of circumstantial and other evidence, and so much delay and yielding to the murderers' defenders, "that general muddle and confusion arises in the minds of everybody concerned, and they are glad to drop the whole affair and turn to something else. The author of this book is a journalist who has been employed to report many | murder trials, and share (as the Amerii cans permit reporters to share) in the collection of "clews" and "histories." He has condensed and collated his reports of cases in which murderers have escaped, and it is surprising to note how many names known to English and colonial readers appear in this array of facts. No fictional murder stories" can be compared with these tales from real life, and in almost every story the murderer stands revealed to anyone with imagination and a knowledge of criminal procedure One feels a difficulty in releasing the mind from the horrible details here quietly, clearly and unemotionally described.