Ernest Hopkins. in "Our Lawless Police." quotes an American Bar Association committee as reporting that the third degree is still widespread in the United States. In referring to the "war on criminals." Hopkins said: "The notorious fact is that the police do not apply their war theory to the classes of criminals. * * * It is visited upon the youthful imitation gangsters. boys of 18 and 19. It is visited in exceedingly numerous instances upon mere indigents and morons and vagrants and unemployed men and migratorles and drug addicts and immigrants and illiterates." Figures submitted to the Wickersham Commission by the Voluntary Defenders Committee of the City of New York show that of the 1.235 cases defended in court trials by this organization in 1930. there were 289 defendants. or 23.4 percent. who proved to the satisfaction of the agents that they had been beaten by the police either upon arrest or in the backrooms of the various station houses. Seventyfive had no prior conviction. In the book "New Horizons in Criminology" by Barnes and Teeters. the authors say on page 280: "It is significant. without going further. to note that (1) the third degree is not restricted to any one section of the country. (2) in general it is used more frequently against friendless and inconspicuous persons than against dangerous criminals who are known to have powerful connections. (3) Ingenious devices or techniques that leave no mark on the body of the suspect are used by the more adroit police officers. and (4) the third degree still persists in spite of its illegality and its frightfulness." Roscoe Pound gives this pertinent information: "In the United States the feeling of police and prosecutor that they ought to be able to interrogate suspected persons long ago led to a systematic development of extralegal or downright illegal examinations by officials with every external appearance of legality.
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