Upstate D.A.

The Upstate D.A. sets forth the recollections of the Steuben County Prosecutor about his three years as the county's chief law enforcement officer. They were busy and exciting times, coming at the beginning of the Great Depression and at the end of the Great Experiment - National Prohibition. Among the 400 crimes he prosecuted in those three years were murders, robberies, arsons, assaults, extortions, and many lesser crimes. On the occasion of his death, thirty-five years later, the local paper described George W. Pratt as "a fighting district attorney who took a lead in stamping out crime rather than following after-the-fact. He was the key force in the prosecution or investigation of 11 murders during his tenure as prosecutor. He smashed an arson ring threatening the whole county. * * * Few Steuben County attorneys * * * were as colorful and aggressive as the white-maned lawyer whose vitality added strength to whatever pursuit in which he engaged." His stories accurately reflect the difficult economic times, the division in the country over prohibition, and the inner workings of a small-town law enforcement effort. At the time, an upstate D.A. was a one-man operation. He had no assistants, and personally investigated many of the crimes, and with all that went to trial, he prepared the cases and tried them, usually to a jury. In many of the cases described, the reader gets an inside view of the strategies and maneuvering of opposing counsel, and yes, even of some of the tricks they try to spring on each other.