POLICE SCIENCE LEGAL ABSTRACTS AND NOTES.

The article presents some Police Science legal abstracts and notes. An objection was raised by the defendant in the recent case of People vs. Jersky, 36 N. E. (2d) 347 (1941) to the testimony of an expert as to the distance from the deceased at which a revolver had been fired. The defendant pleaded self-defense, contending that the gun was fired at close range as he and the deceased were wrestling for its possession. In upholding the trial court's conviction the Illinois Supreme Court held that the expert's opinion pertained only to an evidentiary fact and not to an ultimate fact and that therefore his opinion could not be considered as an invasion of the jury's province. In the recent case of Apodoca vs. State, 146 S. W. (2d) 381 (Texas, 1940), the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals held that it was in violation of the constitutional privilege against self-incrimination to compel a motorist (under arrest for killing a pedestrian) to submit to various tests for alcoholic intoxication. Since no other state has so strict a statute or so consistently conservative decisions upon the general subject of criminal confessions, this recent decision loses some of its significance in so far as other jurisdictions are concerned.