Word: felons
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Unlikely Figure. Gideon himself hardly seems at first glance to be the figure of a man of destiny: gaunt, cantankerous, half-educated, a petty gambler and four-times-convicted felon. Yet as one lawyer remarked, "It has become almost axiomatic that the great rights which are secured for all of us by the Bill of Rights are constantly tested and retested in the courts by the people who live in the bottom of society's barrel." Gideon is a classic type of the cussedly independent man. His 22-page letter from jail (Lewis quotes it in full) to Washington...
Citizen's arrest goes back to medieval England, when the "hue and cry" raised by a criminal's victim obliged any bystander to join the chase and catch the felon. Forerunner of the Wild West posse, the hue and cry was then England's only reliable method of law enforcement. But ever since 1829, when Sir Robert Peel fathered London's bobbies, the existence of fulltime police forces has made citizen's arrest so rare and unnecessary that it now seems to bring more peril than protection...
...holds that a citizen may arrest any person who has committed a felony in his presence or whom he knows to have committed a felony. But the citizen faces a disadvantage that does not plague a policeman, who may arrest anyone whom he reasonably believes to be a felon. If no felony has in fact been committed, the policeman can simply say, "Oops, sorry." In the same situation, a citizen is quite likely to be sued for false arrest, not to mention being arrested himself...
Last week the Legislature received a proposal which would sanction the sterilization of any person convicted three times as a felon. It is also considering a bill that would permit the sterilization of any woman bearing two illegitimate children...
...dock, the British system has its drawbacks. For one, witnesses already under hire by some newspaper face an irresistible impulse to embroider the truth for the sake of tomorrow's headlines. And Britain's checkbook journalism has inspired in the heart of many a felon the conviction that crime does pay. Said Stuart Campbell, editor of the People (circ. 5,450,727): "It's getting to the point that when you ask anyone the color of his hat, he says, 'Six quid and I'll start talking...