the officers before a magistrate upon the charge of being a "suspicious person." At their request, he was remanded until the following morning of November 10th; when he was rearraigned upon a charge of carrying concealed weapons, in violation of a corporation ordinance. In fact, he had carried a pistol which was taken from his pocket, and upon this latter charge he was, subsequently, convicted and punished. John Whalen, Corporation Counsel (William B. Crowell, of counsel), for appellant. To recover in an action for false imprisonment the plaintiff must show an illegal detention of his person. ... Robert L. Harrison and Robert W. B. Elliott, for respondent. . . . The arrest of and detention of a person without a warrant by a peaceofficer for a felony cannot be justified on the ground that at the time of the arrest the person so arrested was, unknown to the officer arresting him, guilty of the violation of a municipal ordinance. GRAY, J. [after stating the case as above:] There was some conflict in the evidence given by the plaintiff and by the defendant as to the occurrences; but the jury believed the former's version, as their verdict proved. The verdict was rendered upon sufficient evidence and, necessarily, established the facts that the defendant had arrested the plaintiff; that the arrest was for a felony and not for a misdemeanor, in the violation of a municipal ordinance, and that the defendant did not have reasonable cause for believing that the plaintiff had committed a felony. . . The only question of law for our consideration is whether, as established, there had been that illegal detention of the plaintiff's person which made out a case of false imprisonment. . . . It is an important principle of our political institutions that every person is entitled to immunity from arrest except by authority and for cause. A peaceofficer may, without a warrant, arrest a person whenever a crime is committed, or attempted, in his presence; when the person arrested has committed a felony, although not in his presence; or where he has reasonable cause for believing the person arrested to have committed a felony. (Code Crim. Pro., sec. 177.) If the arrest was lacking in these elements of authority to make it, then there has been an unlawful detention of the person arrested and, upon his bringing his action and showing the false imprisonment, the burden of justification is on the defendant. (2 Bish. Crim. Proc., § 368.) 1. This arrest having been made without a warrant, it was a question of fact upon the evidence for the jury to decide whether there was reason for defendant's belief that a felony had been committed [by the plaintiff]. The verdict established that the defendant did not have reasonable cause for believing that the plaintiff had committed a felony. The situation was, therefore, that the plaintiff had been placed under an arrest, without reasonable cause for its having been made; that he was detained in prison for a period of time after his arraignment upon the charge, and was subsequently rearraigned and held for trial upon another charge of having committed a misdemeanor. 2. The fact, however, that at the time of the arrest the plaintiff may have been, although unknown to the defendant, guilty of a misdemeanor, is no justification for the trespass, as it is contended. In the first place, if the plaintiff was not placed under arrest for a misdemeanor, then he was illegally imprisoned from November 9th to November 10th. During that period he was falsely imprisoned on a charge for which there was, as it has been found, no reasonable cause. In the next place, the illegality of the arrest was not, and could not be, cured by the subsequent charge of having committed a misdemeanor, for which a conviction was eventually had. It is not a matter of technicalities, but of substance. If a person is arrested for a misdemeanor, his admission to bail before conviction is a matter of right; while, where the arrest is for felony, it is a matter of discretion. (Code Crim. Pro., sec. 553.) The plaintiff was not only detained in prison upon an unfounded charge; but he was deprived of the right of claiming his immediate admission to bail. The procedure in this case was without warrant in the law. It would not do to hold that the illegality of a person's arrest upon an unfounded charge could be cured by the subsequent charge and conviction for another offence. . . . I think the judgment should be affirmed, with costs. PARKER, Ch. J., O'BRIEN, HAIGHT, LANDON, CULLEN and WERNER, JJ., concur. Judgment affirmed. 1084. REVISED Statutes of ILLINOIS. (1874. Ch. 38, § 342.) Div. VII. Arrest. ... § 4. An arrest may be made by an officer or by a private person without warrant, for a criminal offence committed or attempted in his presence, and by an officer, when a criminal offence has in fact been committed and he has reasonable ground for believing that the person to be arrested has committed it. 1085. GRIFFITH J. GRIFFITH. Crime and Criminals. (1910. p. 150.) Ch. VIII. Deterrence by the Police. It is beyond all question, therefore, that throughout the United States there is an immense amount of arresting for which no adequate reason can be shown. . . . Justice William J. Gaynor, recently elected mayor of New York, but then of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, published in the North American Review - in 1903 — an article on "Lawlessness of the Police in New York," in the course of which he said: "One recent instance suffices to show the false idea of the right and power to arrest and imprison without a warrant which exists in the police department of the city of New York. On October last a police captain came into a magistrate's court with a large batch of prisoners, whom he had arrested and locked up over night without warrant. He told the magistrate that he wanted them all committed to prison until after election. The magistrate asked what charge of a criminal offence he made against them, and the response was that he made none, but that he feared they would register and vote if not locked up. Being asked if there was any one to make any charge against them, he said 'No.' The magistrate said that he had no right to commit any one except on a charge of some criminal offence made on oath, and discharged the prisoners. Can any one imagine such an occurrence in England, or for that matter, anywhere outside of the city of New York?" . . We leave New York and pass to other sections of the country where recent events having caused widespread criticism of the police both in the matter of making arrests and their treatment of the arrested. . . . For a full and earnest discussion of the entire question, one cannot go to a better place than St. Louis, Mo.... Former Governor Johnson and others expressed themselves with great vigor, and as Mr. Johnson has been for some fifty years one of the most noted criminal lawyers in the west, we quote him. . . . He says: "It is not going beyond the domain of exact truth to assert that no ordinary citizen without position, political influence or wealth is safe from an infringement of his rights if he unfortunately falls under the suspicion of the police. . . . The facts show the most tyrannical abuse of power in the officers making the arrests. . . . Frequently, in what is called the 'round-up' of certain localities, a swarm of detectives go forth and indiscriminately arrest persons, and are at a loss to know what charge to put against them; it usually ends with the entry, 'Held for the chief,' or 'Idling.' . . . They arrest citizens upon bare suspicion, and on the flimsiest hearsay evidence or at the dictum of their chief. The lawprescribing warrant, in certain cases, is entirely ignored. They invade the sanctity of the home and drag the innocent, male and female, at unseasonable hours of the night to the prison." SUB-TOPIC C. DETENTION, AFTER ARREST, WITHOUT INSTITUTING JUDICIAL PROCEEDINGS (A. One Aspect.) 1087. EDWARD J. LOWELL. On the Eve of the French Revolution. (1892. Ch. X, pp. 116, 357.) Lettres de Cachet under the French Monarchy. . . . An order of arrest under the royal hand and seal was known as a lettre de cachet.1 Arbitrary imprisonment, without trial, is a thing so outrageous to Anglo-Saxon feelings that we are apt to forget that it has until recent years formed a part of the regular practice of most civilized nations. It is considered necessary to what is called the police of the country, a word for which we have in English no exact equivalent. Police, in this sense, not only punishes crime, but averts danger. Acts which may injure the public are prevented by guessing at evil intentions; and criminal enterprises are not allowed to come to action. This sort of protection is a part of the function of every government; but on the Continent, in old times, and still in some countries, long and painful imprisonment of men who had never been convicted of any crime was considered one of the proper methods of police. It was justified in some measure in French eyes by the fact that secrecy saved the feelings of innocent families, which thus did not suffer in the public estimation for the misdeeds of one unruly member. In France, where the family is much more of a unit than in English-speaking countries, the disgrace of one person belonging to it affects the others far more seriously. The lettre de cachet of old France, confining its victim in a state prison, was too elaborate a method 1 The lettre de cachet was written on paper, signed by the king, and countersigned by a minister; it was so sealed that it could not be opened without breaking the seal, and it was deemed a confidential warrant. to be used with the turbulent lower classes (for them there were less dignified forms of proceeding); but it was freely employed against persons of any consequence. Spendthrifts and licentious youths were shut up at the request of their relations. Authors of dangerous books were readily clapped into the Bastile, Vincennes or Fors l'Eveque. Voltaire, Diderot, Mirabeau, and many others underwent that sort of confinement; and the first of them is said to have procured by his influence the incarceration of one of his own literary enemies. Fallen statesmen were fortunate when they did not pass from the cabinet to the prison, but were allowed the alternative of exile, or of seclusion in their own country houses. But this was not the worst. The lettre de cachet was too often the instrument of private hate. Signed carelessly, or even in blank, by the king, it could be procured by the favorite or the favorite's favorite, for his own purposes. And if the victim had no protector to plead his cause, he might be forgotten in captivity and waste a lifetime. For such abuses as this, there is no remedy but publicity. . . . After the overthrow of the Monarchy, changes of law were recommended, in the direction of giving a better chance to accused persons. . . . According to some of the provincial committee reports1 made to the Constitutional Convention, arbitrary imprisonment by lettre de cachet was to be suppressed altogether; according to others it was to be regulated, but the practice retained where public policy or family discipline might require it. The reports show that everybody was opposed to the use of lettres de cachet as they then existed; but most of the reports that had anything to say about them expressed a desire to keep something of the kind. They were considered necessary for reasons of state, or in the interest of families. ... 1088. H. MORSE STEPHENS, The French Revolution (1891. Vol. II, ch. X, p. 321); and H. TAINE, The French Revolution (1884. Bk. VII, ch. III, Bk. VIII, ch. I, transl. Durand, vol. III, pp. 266, 293). The period of the Reign of Terror marks the crisis of the Revolution. It is the period which distinguishes it from all other revolutions; and a mention of the French Revolution in 1793 brings at once before the mind a picture of crowded prisons, of carts on their way with victims to execution, and of the guillotine. . . . The Reign of Terror did not really begin until after the establishment of the Great Committee of Public Safety, when Barère declared in the Convention that Terror was the "order of the day." . . . When the Great Committee firmly seized the reins of power, . . . it found all its instruments ready to its hand the Committee of General Security, the Revolutionary Tribunal, and the Representatives on Mission. . . To overawe and subdue the capital, special measures were needed. ... These revolutionary committees had three chief means of maintaining the Terror in their sections - "cartes de sureté,” “denunciations," and the "law of the suspects." "Cartes de sureté," or guarantee cards, were issued by the revolutionary committees, and contained a full history of each individual to whom they were issued, and especially of his or her life since 1789. . . . Every citizen, whether man or woman, had to carry a carte de sureté about with him or her, and had to produce it at any moment to any one who might ask to see it, under pain of being instantly taken to the nearest revolutionary committee. . . The system of "denunciation" came to the help of the organizers of the Terror. Any one who heard a citizen make an anti-revolutionary remark, or 1 "Cahiers." who noticed anything suspicious about him, could forward a denunciation to a revolutionary committee, which had immediately to investigate the case, and which generally committed the denounced person to prison, and marked on the denouncer's carte de sureté that he was a good citizen, thus making it to the advantage of any one to denounce as many people as possible. Finally the vast net of the "Law of the Suspects," which was carefully framed by the great jurist Merlin of Douai, was pretty sure to catch any dangerous individual, even if he had managed to obtain a carte de sureté and had escaped being denounced. Under this law, any one who had been of noble birth or had held any office before 1789; any one who had any connection, whether of relationship or of service, to an emigré; any one who could not show he had made some sacrifice for the cause of the Revolution; and, in short, any one who for any reason whatever might be thought to have any reason to be discontented with the existing regime was liable, at a moment's notice, to be brought before a revolutionary committee and sent to prison. . . . The minutes of the meetings of the revolutionary committee of Bordeaux ... show in detail the inside workings of a revolutionary committee. The number of arrested goes on increasing; on the 27th of Prairial (year II; 1794) there are 1524. The committee is essentially a police office; it delivers certificates of civism, issues warrants of arrest; . . . receives and transmits denunciations, summons the denounced to appear before it, reads interrogations, writes to the Committee of Public Safety, etc. The following are samples of its warrants of arrest: "Citoyen Hery, formerly a (man) milliner, makes a denunciation in this office against Citizen Tauray and wife, in accordance with which the Committee orders their arrest, and seals put on their papers." "Muller, a riding-master, will be confined in the former Petit Seminsire, under suspicion of aristocracy, according to common repute." . . . In depriving "suspects" of their liberty, there are several degrees; there are various ways of getting hold of people. Sometimes, the "suspect" is "adjourned," that is to say, the order of arrest is simply suspended; he lives under a perpetual menace that is generally fulfilled; he never knows in the morning that he will not sleep in a prison that night. Sometimes, he is put on the limits of his commune. Sometimes, he is confined to his house with or without guards, and, in the former case, he is obliged to pay them. Again, finally, and which occurs most frequently, he is shut up in this or that common jail. In the single department of Doubs, 1200 men and women are "adjourned," 300 put on the limits of the commune, 1500 confined to their houses, and 2200 imprisoned. In Paris, 36 prisons and more than 96 lock-ups, or temporary jails, constantly filled by the revolutionary committees, do not suffice for the service; while it is estimated that, in France, not counting more than 40,000 provisional jails, 1200 prisons, full and running over, contain each more than 200 inmates. At Paris, notwithstanding the daily void created by the guillotine, the number of the imprisoned on Floreal 9, year II, amounts to 7840; and, on Messidor 25 following, notwithstanding the large batches of 50 and 60 persons led in one day, and every day, to the scaffold, the number is still 7502. There are more than 1000 persons in the prisons of Arras, more than 1500 in those of Toulouse, more than 3000 in those of Strasbourg, and more than 13,000 in those of Nantes. In the two departments alone of Bouches du-Rhone and Vaucluse, Representative Maignet, who is on the spot, reports from 12,000 to 15,000 arrests. "A little before Thermidor, 1794," says Representative Beaulieu, |