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The Green Bag
that Sulzer had urged him to ask Senator Root to use his influence with William Barnes to get Republican members of the Assembly to vote against impeach ment, and to ask DeLancey Nicoll to persuade Charles F. Murphy to call off the legislative investigation. Peck testified that Sulzer had asked him to deny his campaign contribution, even if he should be under oath. The testi mony of these three witnesses was not contradicted. Foremost among the questions in volved in the trial was that whether the Governor could be impeached for acts that had occurred before his official term began or that did not constitute misconduct in his official capacity. The members of the Court of Appeals divided by a vote of five to four on the question whether the court of impeachment could take cognizance of the offenses charged in articles 1 and 2, that is, the filing of a false sworn statement of the defendant's receipts and expenditures in the guber natorial campaign. "It is interesting," says the New York Law Journal (edittorial, Oct. 22), "that on these questions Judge Wernervoted foracquittal because, after considering the arguments pro and con, he was in doubt whether offenses occurring before the term of office began could be considered, and gave the Governor the benefit of the doubt." On the other hand, some of the other members of the Court of Appeals took the position that these acts furnished proper ground for impeachment, be cause, in Judge Miller's phrase, they "reached into the Governorship." Criminal Law and Criminology Judge Harvey Baker of the Boston Juvenile Court, speaking before the Rhode Island Congress of Mothers at Providence, Nov. 5, said that trained probation officers sufficient in number
so that none of them shall have more than seventy-five boys under his care, and all under the charge of a specially trained, well-paid chief, are the most essential part of a juvenile court. Of that new feature, the clinic for juvenile delinquents, he said: "The feature of the court next in importance to the probation department is the clinic for discovery of any physical or mental difficulties or deficiencies which may be the cause of the child's delin quency. Thousands of dollars and thou sands of hours are being wasted annually for the lack of such clinics. This clinic should be presided over by an especially qualified man. He should first of all be a well-trained all-round physician with a winning personality. Superadded to his medical training he should have a good knowledge of psychology. Experi ence shows that this clinical function cannot be adequately performed for the court even by a group of experts in a psychopathic hospital, much less by any dispensary. The expert service must be close at hand and must be embodied in one person." After voluntarily spending a week as a convict in the Auburn penitentiary, Thomas Mott Osborne, chairman of the New York State Commission on Prison Reform, left the prison on October 5. His experience included, not only the ordinary daily life of a convict, but punishment for infraction of rules, in cluding 16 hours in the dungeon. He had been reprimanded for looking around on the first day of his imprisonment. He had been put in the dungeon during the afternoon of October 4 for refusing to work longer. On being released, Mr. Osborne declared the prison system to be a form of slavery and subject to the same objections as any other form of slavery. It deprives the convict, he
