Corpus Delieti

(Ed. Note-The Crimson does not necessarily endorse opinions expressed in printed communications. No attention will be paid to anonymous letters and only under special conditions, at the request of the writer, will names be with hold.)

To The Editor of the CRIMSON:

"Justice," wrote a trenchant wise-man, "is the will of the strong." But it is often unseasonable to bring the truth to light, lest in the minds of lesser men, it dazzles, and becomes no longer a somatic observation, but a personal compulsion. Judge Charles S. Sullivan of the Charlestown court is doubtless well-read in concepts of justice, and with long experience on the magistrate's bench unquestionably has formulated his own position concerning this most difficult ethical problem. Before his judicial vision unfolds more than seven-hundred years of British Common Law. The pillars of his chambers rest upon it; Coke, and Hyde, and Blackstone, are not strangers to him, nor the function of evidence and the rights of the accused. The Boston Traveler, however, is a conservative paper. Outside of occasional seventy-two point streamers on its front page it can be relied on for that streamy stability which constitutes Boston journalism.

In its "Complete Final" issue of Friday, May 25, appears the following (vide, p. 21):

Lapin, questioning young Dennett, a Sophomore at Harvard, had established that two days before the demonstration in Charlestown, which provoked the arrests, Dennett had had a conversation at police headquarters with Inspector Benjamin Goodman of the radical squad.

Lapin had sought to show the nature of the conversation between Dennett and Goodman, but more than 20 questions he had addressed to Dennett had been interrupted by Judge Sullivan with the remark, "You need not answer the question."

When Lapin persisted in trying to obtain testimony as to the Dennett-Goodman conversation, Judge Sullivan said to Lapin:

"You've questioned him enough on that point."

"I'll withdraw that point," replied Lapin.

Judge Angered

Judge Sullivan, angered by some inflection in the words, said hotly: "That's an insulting remark. Withdraw it."

"I'll withdraw the remark," Lapin said evenly.

Lapin then started to ask the court a question, but the judge, in reply, ordered him to sit down.

Lapin protested and was again ordered to sit down. Hesitant, Lapin, half- turned to his chair, only to have the judge shout angrily, "Officers, place him under arrest."

Francis Bacon wrote long ago: "Judges ought to remember that their office is 'jus dicere,' and not 'jus dare...', while the Apostle Timothy once said of higher matters: "Nos scimus quia lex bona est, modo quis ea utatur legitime."

Surely, Justice Sullivan can read Latin. Malcolm A. Hoffman '34.