Author of “ Expert and Opinion Evidence," " Insanity as a Defence to Crime, etc., etc. ST. LOUIS: Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1884, by JOHN D. LAWSON, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. St. Louis. Mo. PREFACE. The present volume completes the series of " Leading Cases Simplified.” In my first volume (Common Law Cases) I stated my object to be to present the leading cases of the Common Law in a brief and semihumorous form. The favor with which my attempt was received induced me, in a second volume, to treat in the same way the leading cases in Equity and Constitutional Law. And in this third volume, both the student and the practitioner will be able, I think, to find all the leading cases and all the principles of the criminal law, as administered at common law and to some extent as altered by statute. To those (and I include the lay reader here) who are asking why it is that the punishment of crime throughout the United States has become so slow and so uncertain, I submit “My Assize Sermon to the Judges of Appeal” as containing an answer to this growing inquiry. J. D. L. ST. LOUIS, JUNE 1884. |