The Court. Did you think the public interest was served by anybody representing the Government to try to get a woman—
The Witness. I don't think of anything—
The Court.—To identify somebody? * * *
The Witness. I don't think of anything like that, just simply what she tell you.
The Court. Don't you think it would be a good idea to find out, if you could?
The Witness. I think it would be.
The Court. I am trying to find out why you didn't do it. (R. 641.)
Q. (By Mr. McAnarney) Did you regard it as any of your business or any of your duty to look up and see who the Government man was who was with Mrs. Andrews? A. Why should I bother about it? (R. 640, 641.)
This cross-examination must appear strange to anyone familiar with the usual conduct of Massachusetts trial judges. For Judge Thayer to insist that it was the duty of a small shopkeeper, poorly educated and struggling with imperfect English, to ferret out intimations of police improprieties conveyed in the course of a casual conversation was to draw a "red herring" across the trail. It undoubtedly served to discredit Kurlansky in the eyes of the jury and thereby to obliterate the effect of important testimony adverse to the Commonwealth. Only the extraordinary features of this case, as they will unfold in the course of the subsequent discussion, can account for the incident.
C. In February 1921, Andrews complained to the police of an assault on herself in her apartment in
