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a. 606—CONCUR ILLINOIS v. ALLEN 3 the accused’s objection that he could not be convicted in his absenee, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said: “Tt does not seem to us to be consonant with the dictates of common sense that an accused person... should be at liberty, whenever he pleases, . . . to break up a trial already commenced. The practical result of such a proposition, if allowed to be law, would be to prevent any trial whatever until the accused person himself should be pleased to permit it.... This would be a travesty of justice which could not be tolerated .... [We do not think that any rule of law or constitutional principle leads us to any conclusion that would be so disastrous as well to the administration of justice as to the true interests of civil liberty. .. . “The question is one of broad public poliey, whether an accused person, placed upon trial for crime and protected by all the safeguards with which the humanity of our present criminal law sedulously surrounds him, can with impunity defy the processes of that law, paralyze the proceedings of courts and juries and turn them into a soleinn farce, and ultimately compel society, for its own safety, to restrict the operation of the principle of personal liberty. Neither in criminal nor in civil cases will the law allow a person to take advantage of his own wrong.” To allow the disruptive activities of a defendant like respondent to prevent his trial is to allow him to profit from his own wrong. The Constitution would protect none of us if it prevented the courts from acting to preserve the very processes which the Constitution itself prescribes,