P

ABLO was
a sixteen-year-old
Mexican boy, slight and frail,
dark of skin and with the big,
liquid black eyes of his race.

Pablo was in the county jail. The boy was charged with burglary. This is what he had done: In the first place he had committed the offence against society of getting desperately hungry while he was without money or friends or work. Now the hunger of a sixteen-year-old boy is something that cannot be reasoned with, as every parent with boys well knows, and when this

Mexican lad saw a lunch wagon containing dozens upon dozens of warm, rich, luscious pies, with no driver to guard them, he was guilty of opening the door of the closed vehicle, and reaching in with the intent of extricating a pie, value ten

cents.

That is how it happened that Pablo came to be arrested and locked up in a cell in the county jail, for, by a technicality of the law, a wagon enclosed in this manner is a building, and the sixteenyear-old boy had been guilty of forcing his way into a building with the intent

to steal, and under a California decision this constituted burglary.

Though California has juvenile courts and probation officers and various other agencies to mollify the undue harshness of the law, none of these seemed to be aware of Pablo's case, and the friendless boy was in a fair way to be committed for a felony, possibly involving sentence to the penitentiary, in which case his life would almost certainly have been

wrecked.

It was nobody's business to see to it that this "under dog" was given fair play. While the State provided elaborate and costly machinery for the purpose of making arrests, prosecuting attorneys to present the evidence against the prisoner, judges to sentence him and prisons to wreck him morally and physically, it did not provide a defender. That is, not until the county of Los Angeles made provision for that official in its charter a year ago.

Pablo's case did not end in a tragedy as most of such cases do in other parts of the country, for it was a simple matter, when the alert and capable young man who holds the office of Public Defender learned the details of the boy's offence, to explain the matter in a proper light and secure prompt and thorough justice. The boy had lain in jail long enough to expiate his offence, such as it was, and when the judge of the Juvenile Court was presented with all the details, the charge was dismissed.

Even from the cold, "practical" standpoint of the courts and the taxpayers, the office of public defender is justified by the fact that it clears the calendar of needless prosecutions, simplifies the presentation of such cases as are brought, and, finally, saves more money for the county than it costs.

That is the summing up of the year's work of the office conducted by Mr. Walton J. Wood, with seven deputies and a

small clerical force. When I entered the office I found all the chairs in the waiting room occupied by people who were palpably in trouble. Some of them were women whose husbands were in jail, some were old fathers whose boys were imprisoned for some youthful scrape, some were day laborers, ignorant men and many of them foreigners but useful citizens of the State, nevertheless; our builders and diggers and hewers of wood without whom our great modern works would be impossible. Most of the laborers were here because of non-payment of wages, for, aside from the defence of poor men accused of crime, this office acts for the plaintiff in cases of wage claims or other small litigation involving sums of less than one hundred dollars.

The need of an efficient lawyer, paid by the county, to defend those prisoners who are unable to pay for such services is manifest. The district attorney and his staff are, as a rule, men of more than average ability in their professions. While it is their duty to examine the merits of a case before undertaking the prosecution, it often happens that they do not have an opportunity to hear both sides. It is not unnatural for the prisoner to withhold his confidence from the official who is paid to prosecute him, therefore many points in the prisoner's favor do not come to the attorney's attention.

Once engaged in the prosecution of an alleged criminal, the district attorney is not even supposed to be impartial; it is his business to present the case of the State as forcibly as possible, and his reputation depends upon his success in doing so.

Of course it is customary for the court to assign an attorney for the defence of indigent prisoners. Too often this semblance of fair play is really a solemn farce. In some States, California for instance, no provision is made for the payment of these attorneys for their services and, therefore, too frequently mere tyros,

undertake such cases for the sake of "practice". What chance has a man, even if his case is just, whose attorney is just learning the rules of the game as he goes along, while opposing him is at prosecutor with the experience of hundreds of cases behind him and special qualifications for the position he holds? Merely the fact that the prosecutor is an official of the State lends to his side a certain dignity, a certain weight with the jury. The sense of fair play demands that the State employ an official of equal rank, in order that justice may be done to those who cannot pay a competent attorney for defending them.

Quite as serious a handicap to the defendant's case is the type of lawyer which Mr. Wood describes as "legal vermin", jail lawyers, who are veritable leeches upon the poor and ignorant. These men hang about the jails and try to secure the few dollars which an unfortunate may possess, and in return give no legal assistance, sometimes even advise courses against the interest of the clients. After securing a small fee, they will often give themselves no further trouble in the matter but merely advise the prisoner to plead guilty and throw himself on the mercy of the court without taking the pains to secure and present such facts as might incline the court to mercy.

This explanation illustrates the function of the public defender. It is not his duty to secure the acquittal of the guilty, but to look into the merits of each case, to learn something about the mitigating circumstances, and to see that this information is laid before the court.

The burden to the taxpayers is not heavy. The public defender's office is spending seven hundred dollars a month. in salaries in the criminal branch of its work and an equal amount in the handling of civil cases, wage claims, and the like. This is not an excessive amount when distributed among the taxpayers of a wealthy county and, indeed, it is claimed by impartial observers that the amount so expended is saved to the