e occasion is ripe for
the lawyer to urge the complainant to "temper justice with mercy" and
withdraw "before it be too late and the poor man be ruined forever."

If the complainant is, however, bent on bringing the defendant to
justice and remains adamantine to the arguments of the lawyer and
the tears of the defendant's family connections, it remains for the
prisoner's attorney to endeavor to get the case adjourned "until matters
can be adjusted"--to wit, restitution made if money has been stolen,
or doctors' bills paid if a head has been cracked, with perhaps another
chance of "pulling off" the complainant and his witnesses. Failing in
an attempt to secure an adjournment, two courses remain open: first, to
persuade the court that the matter is a trivial one arising out of petty
spite, is all a mistake, or that at best it is a case of "disorderly
conduct" (and thus induce the judge to "turn the case out" or inflict
some trifling punishment in the shape of a fine); or, second, if it be
clear that a real crime has been committed, to clamor for an immediate
hearing in order, if it be secured, to subject the prosecution's
witnesses to a most exhaustive cross-examination, and thus get a clear
idea of just what evidence there is against the accused.

At the conclusion of the complainant's case, if it appear reasonably
certain that the magistrate will "hold" the prisoner for the action of a
superior court, the lawyer will then "waive further examination," or,
in other words, put in no defence, preferring the certainty of having to
face a jury trial to affording in prosecution an opportunity to discover
exactly what defence will be put in and to secure evidence in advance
of the trial to rebut it. Thus it rarely happens in criminal cases of
importance that the district attorney knows what the defence is to be
until the defendant himself takes the stand, and, by "waiving further
examination" in the police court, the astute criminal attorney may
select at his leisure the defence best suited to fit in with and render
nugatory the prosecution's evidence.

The writer has frequently been told by the attorney for a defendant on
trial for crime that "the defence has not yet been decided upon."
In fact, such statements are exceedingly common. In many courts the
attitude of all parties concerned seems to be that the defendant will
put up a perjured defence (so far as his own testimony is concerned,
at any rate) as a matter of course,