People v. Rose

Works, J. Rose, one of the defendants in this action, was tried and convicted of the crime of fraudulently winning money by means of a game of bunco. He moved for a new trial, which was granted, and the people appeal.

One of the grounds upon which the motion was granted was, that a witness for the people was allowed, as an ex[379]pert, to describe, not the game actually played by the defendants, but the game of bunco generally. His testimony on this point was as follows: —

“It generally takes three men to start a game. The first one, after the victim is picked out, he finds his antecedents, his name, and his relations, and where he is from. After he is sufficiently conversant with the antecedents of a person, his family, and so on, he communicates to what we call a capper. The capper introduces himself as a relative of some friend, or some relative of his. The capper approaches the victim,— he has various names, — or sucker,—‘How do you do?’ Mr. So-and-so probably not recognizing him, he says, ‘ I am so-and-so. I met you at such a place,— met some of your relatives.’ Asks him to take a walk. They take a walk, and come to the place. It is upstairs. Not necessarily upstairs. In this case it was upstairs. He hauls out a card, and says to the victim, ‘ By the by, I believe I have drawn a prize; we ’ll go upstairs and draw it and cash the thing.' Asks him to come. Opens the rtiom. ' There is a gentleman'behind the desk, called the banker. He says, ‘ I believe I have drawn a prize,’ and throws down the card. He goes over to see. He says, ‘ Yes; you have drawn $101.’ He asks to cash it, and he goes and pays him over one hundred dollars. ‘ Well, we don’t pay any fractional parts of prizes, but We will give you a ticket, the drawing on which takes place some future day.’ He says, ‘Well, I haven’t any time; I am going out of the city to-day or to-morrow, and my friend is also going out of town. We have no time to stay.’ ‘ Well,’ he says, ‘we are provided with by-laws, and from the by-laws I will see what I can do.’ Finally he finds a section, and he says, ‘ There is a section which allows a special drawing. The cards are similar to the little card here. The highest number is 48, isn’t it?’. There aré different games, some of them as high as 60. He says, ‘ Take eight cards, each of the [380]