Linder, Usher F.; Gillespie, Joseph. Reminiscences of the Early Bench and Bar of Illinois . Chicago: The Chicago Legal News company, 1879. [format: book], [genre: memoir]. Permission: Northern Illinois University
Persistent link to this document: http://lincoln.lib.niu.edu/file.php?file=linder.html

science. All these branches of knowledge he could turn to good account whenever required, but it was in his capacity of a lawyer that he excelled. Most people at first supposed that he was merely a brilliant orator, and had no great knowledge of law, but in this they were wofully mistaken. U. F. Linder was a profound lawyer. He understood all its technicalities. I never know any one to get the better of him on a legal point, and I have seen him tested many a time. Any one who calculated to gain a case against Linder — without having the law and the right clearly on his side — " reckoned without his host," for he frequently succeeded with the law and the testimony manifestly against him. I never felt that a defendant in a criminal case was safe from a verdict when Linder prosecuted, no matter what the evidence might be in his favor; if Linder contended for a conviction, our only hope was in the courts. He would generally, if there was nothing in a case, abandon the prosecution. But woe be to the accused, if the Attorney-General did not see fit to nol pros, and the law was not clearly with them. I always believed that it was inhuman to confer the office of prosecuting attorney upon such men as Linder and Bissell.

Prosecuting attorneys do not as often as justice requires forbear to prosecute. Professional pride, the habit of regarding the accused as guilty, which all prosecutors fall into, and the unrelenting importunity of enemies of the defendant, blind these officers to a proper sense of duty, and justice is often perverted. These sentiments I know are not in accord with those generally entertained, but they are, nevertheless, worthy of acceptance. Ordinary men are greatly overmatched by such prosecutors as I have named. I have known Linder to get a verdict consigning a man to the penitentiary for

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