"From And After"

In a Lansing, Mich., courtroom last week Judge Charles B. Collingwood was sentencing Mrs. Etta Mae Miller. It had taken a jury of eight men and four women only 13 minutes to find her guilty. She was charged with having sold two pints of liquor. She was charged also with being a "habitual criminal," inasmuch as this last offense was her fourth. So to her said Judge Collingwood: "It is the sentence of this court that from and after this day you shall be confined in the Detroit House of Correction for the remainder of your life." In the same court on the same day, a bellboy had pleaded guilty to manslaughter, had been fined $400 and freed.

Mrs. Miller's life sentence, which began some two weeks before the ninth anniversary of U. S. Prohibition, was purely a Prohibition byproduct, inasmuch as her four convictions had all been found on liquor charges. In 1924, in 1925, in 1927, she had served from six days to a year for violation of the prohibition act. The life sentence was imposed under the Baumes-like Michigan law which establishes four convictions as the test of a "habitual criminal" and sentences such criminals to life terms. Mrs. Miller has ten children, two grandchildren. Her husband is serving his first liquor-conviction sentence. Lest any feel that Mrs. Miller had been too severely punished. Dr. Clarence True Wilson, General Secretary of the Board of Temperance, Prohibition and Public Morals, spoke up for Methodism. Said he: "Our only regret is that the woman was not sentenced to life imprisonment before her ten children were born. When one has violated the Constitution four times, he or she is proved to be an habitual criminal and should be segregated from society to prevent the production of subnormal offsprings."* It appeared at least possible, however, that Mrs. Miller would not spend the rest of her life as Convict No. 1289. Michi gan's Governor Fred W. Green has already expressed the opinion that the "habitual criminal" act is somewhat drastic in its application to liquor law offenses. It is also thought that the Michigan Legislature will amend the state prohibition laws to give such offenders as Mrs. Miller a loop hole from the "habitual criminal" penalty. If such a crime as Mrs. Miller's, for in stance, were classed as a misdemeanor rather than a felony, it would not come under the "habitual" act. The Michigan court gave its imprimatur to the law, when a few days later it upheld the life sentence imposed upon one Fred Pal, Lansing rum peddler, who three times had been convicted of felony, convicted again for possessing a pint of gin. ^

*Pedants, hairsplitting, accused Dr. Wilson of faulty grammar."He" should not be used after "one" "he or she" belongs to the "everyone will remove his or her hat" school of speech, and "offspring" serves for ten children as well as for one child, said they.