GHOST IN A PRISON.

Colonist, Volume LVI, Issue 13420, 18 March 1914, Page 6

GHOST IN A PRISON.

The American police have frequently secured important evidence by means of the private inquisition, known as the "third degree examination"; but the question is being raised in New York whether ghosts should be employed to wring confessions from suspects. In the recent case of John Grondin, a young druggist, of Lob Angeles, California, the police tried to secure an admission of crime by "preying upon his supernatural fears," and Grondin's attorney complains that this is carrying the third degree a trifle top far. .He declares that shortly after Grondin was arrested he was taken into a darkened room, where a ghost soon appeared, and demanded in gloomy tones, "Why did you murder me?"

Grondin's attorney condemned the police action as outrageous, but declared that the ordeal furnished evidence of hi.s client's innocence. Grondin is accused of poisoning his wife under circumstances indicating that she attempted to commit suicide by gas. The police charge that he tried to kill her when they lived at Portland, Maine. When Mrs. Grondin was found dead on October 30 last the husband made public a note which he said had been written by his wife. It contained an admission of improper conduct, and expressed a hope that he would be happy with "a woman who truly loved •him." Handwriting experts said that the note was a forgery, and their assertion, coupled with the arrival in Los Angeles from Maine of a widow in whom Grondin was said to be interested, caused the exhumation of Mrs. Grondin's- vital organs contained poison, and Grondin's arrest followed. J

In the ease of the druggist, a ghost projected upon a white sheet was used for the first time in the annals of the tliird degree. A more familiar method is to deprive the subject of food and sleep for a prolonged period, and then to invite a confession as a prelude to. less vigorous imprisonment. The. American police departments do not -officially recognise "tliird degrees," but the success attending them is the excuse why they are still practised, and why the practitioners are seldom punished.

Mr. Frederick Duchay, the new superintendent of the prisons' department of the Department of Justice, hX Washington, announces his intention of .making the Federal prisons into "homes." "Prisoners," said he, "are merely men who are sick. .1 believe that they .should be treated kindly. Our purpose should always be to reform. I tee no reason why the better class of prisoners should not call the prison a home." Mr. Duchay has started an investi 7 gation with the object of exposing and correcting scandals in the administration of the Federal prisons-.