How TO CONDUCT A CRIMINAL CASE

How TO CONDUCT A CRIMINAL CASE (3d ed.). By William Harman Black. Prentice-Hall, Inc., New York, 1935. Pp. lxxvi, 483. Price: $6.50. This work describes in chronological form the various legal stages through which a criminal case may pass under New York criminal procedure from the commission of the crime to the execution of the sentence or the acquittal of the defendant. The author is Honorable William Harman Black, Justice of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, former Acting District Attorney of New York City. The author makes no pretense to having written a scholarly treatise. He expresses the hope that his experience as Acting District Attorney, and his thirteen years experience in the supreme court have enabled him to write a "practical book." This aim was fully realized in the favorable reviews and the response the work received in its earlier editions. The present edition includes references and is adapted to legislative changes made in the criminal law in New York since the last edition in 1929. It also contains citations to and quotations from recent leading federal and New York decisions. As each step in the progress of a criminal case is described, appropriate forms are inserted. Very little use is made of footnotes; the citations are in the body of the text. Occasionally, where a quotation follows a citation of cases, it is difficult to determine the case from which the quotation was taken. One feature of the book is a large graphic chart which is helpful in obtaining perspective of the various contingencies which may arise in the course of a criminal proceeding. The work is well indexed, albeit the indices are all in the front, for subject materials, forms and citations to statutes and cases. This is the sort of book a person in the novitiate stages of criminal practice might well dream of having. It tells him what to do in simple language, and gives him skeleton forms which he can animate with the living facts of his case. It should also be very helpful to the law student as collateral reading in his course in criminal procedure. It must not be taken, however, that the book is only for the tyro; the procedure-wise practitioner would find it profitable to read it for perspective on the three hundred contingencies that may arise in a criminal case in New York. It will be of interest primarily to New York lawyers and students of New York criminal procedure. Albert J. Harno.t