Assayer

“ Gentlemen of the Jury,—The facts in this case are not disputed, and the defence, if my friend will allow me to say so, is so thin that I don't propose to waste the time of the Court by taking you over the evidence. The plea is one of temporary insanity. Well, gentlemen, I daresay it is clearer to me than it is to you why this rather—what shall we call it?—bizarre defence has been set up. The alternative would have been to plead guilty. Now, gentlemen, if the prisoner had pleaded guilty my friend would have had to rely on a simple appeal to his lordship. ”

“ He appears, in the eye of the jury, more in the light of an interested individual, anxious to drag the offender in the most summary manner to the punishment of the law, than as an upright and unbiassed judge, whose duty it is coolly to consider the whole case, to weigh the evidence of the respective witnesses, to consider, with benevolent attention, the defence of the prisoner, and, after all this, to pronounce, with authoritative impartiality, the sentence of the law. ”

“ Even if the paraphernalia of justice,—the judge, and the jury, and the lawyers, could be induced to declare her innocent before all men, must she not confess her guilt to him,—to that one,—for whose verdict alone she cared? ”

“ COUNTESS.
If he be guilty—
KING (sarcastically.)
IF he be guilty, madam?
COUNTESS. Yes, sire; if he has forgotten what Your Majesty has done for Poland, he is no son of mine!
KING.
I shall spare you all the reflections I have made on the subject, madam. Tyrant as
I am, I shall not punish the innocent mother for the guilty son. But perhaps this
gentleman [ALBERT] and you [WEDGEWOOD] recommended trial—
WEDGEWOOD.
Trial by jury! Your Majesty has said it! There's freedom in the very words!
KING.
How is it to be managed? ”

“ A young officer being indicted for an assault on an aged gentleman, Mr. Erskine began to open the case thus: "This is an indictment against a soldier for assaulting an old man." "Sir," indignantly interrupted the defendant, "I am no soldier, I am an officer!" "I beg your pardon," said Mr. Erskine; "then, gentlemen of the jury, this is an indictment against an officer, who is no soldier, for assaulting an old man." ”

“ If, after the recent scandalous proceedings in another court, you, as a special jury in this High Court of Justice, bring in a verdict of Guilty against me and my co-defendant, you will decisively inaugurate a new era of persecution, in which no advantage can accrue to truth or morality, but in which fierce passions will be kindled, oppression and resistance matched against each other, and the land perhaps disgraced with violence and stained with blood. ”

“ A justice might issue a warrant for the arrest, conduct the search himself, effect the capture, examine the accused with and without witnesses, extract a confession by alternately cajoling him as a friend and bullying him as a magistrate, commit him, and finally give damning evidence against him at his trial. ”

“ Manly; I have been prosecuted with a cruelty scarcely to be paralleled. A person avowedly criminal in the same indictment with myself has been brought forth as a capital witness against me; a fact, I believe, totally unexampled. My lords, oppressed as I am with infamy, loaded as I am with distress, sunk under this cruel prosecution, your lordships and the gentlemen of the jury cannot think life a matter of any value to me. ”

“ A boy of thirteen is tried, say for picking the pocket of some subject of her Majesty, and the offence is about as clearly proved as an offence can be. He is called upon for his defence, and contents himself with a little declamation about the jurymen and his country—asserts that all the witnesses have committed perjury, and hints that the police force generally have entered into a conspiracy ‘again’ him. ”

“ May it please your lordship, and you gentlemen of the jury, I am of counsel for the King against the prisoner at the bar. You have heard that he stands indicted for a murder done upon the person of a young girl. Such crimes as this you may perhaps reckon to be not uncommon, and, indeed, in these times, I am sorry to say it, there is scarce any fact so barbarous and unnatural but what we may hear almost daily instances of it. ”

“ Reader! as the business becomes a little more serious, I must crave a little unprejudiced attention. The warrant being executed in the evening, I undertook to produce the parties next morning, before the magistrates; they, of course, willingly appeared; when the hardy villain related the particulars of the assault committed upon him, as if he had never heard of the crime of perjury, or the punishment annexed to it: however the two defendants were of course ordered to find bail, which they did. ”

“ If any man charged another with treason, murder, felony, or other capital offence, he was said to appeal him, and was termed an appellant; and the defendant, or party charged, was at liberty either to put himself upon his country for trial, or to defend himself by his body. ”

“ The prisoner's counsel rose and delivered his speech for the defence. A very elaborate defence. A defence which went to prove that the prisoner at the bar, though positively guilty, was not morally guilty, or legally guilty—"because, gentlemen of the jury, he is, and for some time has been, insane. Yes, mad, gentlemen of the jury. What has been every action of his life but the action of a madman? ”

“ When counsel for the defendants arose to address you in a three days' argument, for the first time, you, as jurymen, and we, as representatives of the people, were notified of the theory of the defense; that is, that there was a great conspiracy on the part of the people; that there was a conspiracy to hang innocent men; a conspiracy to murder under the guise of the law, and the gentleman was so earnest in that statement that he carried it all through his argument to the jury. ”

“ It is not the form or letter of the trial by jury that authorizes you to send your fellow-man to his dread account, but it is the spirit that sanctifies that glorious institution; and if, through pride, passion, timidity, weakness, or any cause, you deny the prisoner one iota of all the defense to which he is entitled by the law of the land, you yourselves, whatever his guilt may be, will have broken the commandment, “Thou shalt do no murder.” ”

“ But since—”
“Your duty is done, sir,” smiles the chilly court, “and well done. I congratulate you, sir.” Then he turns to the jury. “Gentlemen, I cannot pass your recommendation to mercy lightly. I shall not forget it. It is better that ten guilty men escape than that one suffer innocently. I am now in a trifle of a hurry. I shall suspend sentence until I can think your recommendation well over. Crier, adjourn the court.”
The district attorney had his golf. ”

“ The benign and ever paternal rule under which we live gives even to the most-with-accusation-surrounded, and with-strong-presumption-implicated prisoner, every facility of defence. Having read and matured this indictment, you will, after a week, make choice of an advocate.”
“Am I to be confronted with my accuser?”
“I sincerely hope that the indecent spectacle of insulting attack and offensive rejoinder thus suggested is unknown to the administration of our law.” ”

“ Well may both judge and jury, in the outset of trial, be puzzled to decide between and do justice to86 men whose quarrels are made up of baseness and villainy, and carried on with mutual treachery, fraud, and violence, and whose witnesses are perhaps of the same character with themselves. Each party may justly enough accuse the other, though neither of them are worthy of belief, and deserve even no credit for the imputations with which they asperse each other’s characters. ”

“ Better dry your eyes at once, and not importune friends who will but make excuses. When the judge has called for witnesses, let the man, whoever he be, who saw the assault dare to say, "I saw it," and I will deem him worthy of the beard and long hair of our forefathers. Sooner will you find a false witness against a civilian than one who will tell the truth against the interest and the honour of a soldier. ”

“ My lords and gentlemen of the jury—I rise to address you under circumstances of embarassment which will, I hope, secure for me a little consideration and indulgence at your hands. I have to ask you at the outset to banish any prejudice that might arise in your minds against a man who adopts the singular course—who undertakes the serious responsibility—of pleading his own defence. Such a proceeding might be thought to be dictated either by disparagement of the ordinary legal advocacy, by some poor idea of personal vanity, or by way of reflection on the tribunal before which the defence is made. ”

“ You will then obtain counsel to defend you."
"I shall not have counsel!"
"Why not?"
"There is nothing to defend. The matter is clear. I wrote and printed such and such a thing, here it is, I alone can explain it,—if there is anything punishable in it, punish me." ”

“ The accuser has the advantage of supporting it by a direct and positive oath; the defence can only be collected from circumstances.
“My defence is composed, then, of a variety of circumstances, all tending to show the falsity of this charge, the absurdity of it, the improbability that it could be true. It will be laid before the jury, under the direction of my counsel; and I have the confidence of an innocent man, that it will be manifest to your lordship, the jury, and the whole world, that the story{219} told by this woman is a perversion of truth in every particular. ”

“ Nowhere, not even in the sentence quoted, was it said that the assault, of itself, necessarily proved the intent, but all through the charge in this respect was the constant declaration that the intent was to be deduced from all the circumstances of the case, the court pointing out many things which tended to disclose the real intent of a party, summing up the matter with these observations: 'That is the way you find intent, then, bearing in mind that he is held to have intended whatever consequences might have followed from the act as willfully done by him with the deadly weapon. ”

“ Then: "Mister Foreman and gentlemen of the jury," declaimed Caput in flutelike tones: "The defendant is indicted for the crime of bigamy, an offense alike repugnant to religion, civilization and to the law." ”

“ I stand here at this bar as a delinquent, and do desire that my accuser may be brought forth to accuse me for my delinquency, and then I shall answer to my charge, if any I be guilty of.
[23] No one ought to betray himself.
C. Judge. You are here demanded to take the oath of allegiance, and when you have done that, then you shall be heard about the other; for we have power to tender it to any man. ”

“ No action pending in any court shall abate by the death of either or both the parties thereto, except an action for libel, slander, malicious prosecution, assault, or assault and battery, for a nuisance, or against a justice of the peace for misconduct in office, which shall abate by the death of the defendant. ”

“ This naturally prejudices the jury in favour of the prisoner; and few, even in our own country, who may have been witness to the common routine of our criminal procedure, will not themselves have felt that immediate and irresistible impression, which is made upon the mind of the spectator, when he sees on one side the solemn array of the court, the judges, the officers, and all the terrible show of justice ”

“ The individual will sue in a civil court, to recover pecuniary damages, in an ordinary suit of tort, while the State, for the same offense, through the district attorney's or prosecutor's office, will criminally proceed against the guilty party. We shall now consider briefly some of the more important torts and crimes.
ASSAULT AND BATTERY.—Assault is an attempt, real or apparent, to do injury to the person of another. Battery is a completed assault. It is not necessary that a person have the actual ability to carry out the threat to constitute an assault. ”

“ Allen, Serjt., and Charnock now showed cause. The first question is, whether the evidence was sufficient, as to the first count, to justify the learned judge in putting it to the jury whether or not the defendant had been guilty of an assault. The evidence was, that the plaintiff was surrounded by the defendant and his men, who, with their sleeves and aprons tucked up, threatened to break his neck if he did not quit the workshop. [Maule, J. If there can be such a thing as an assault without an actual beating, this is an assault.] ”

“ As a fact, if any are judged to have betrayed the doings of the sect or to have resisted commands given, punishment is inflicted on them not infrequently, and with so much audacity and dexterity that the assassin very often escapes the detection and penalty of his crime. ”

“ A continual tester to give in evidence, to empanel a jury to examine us, to cry guilty, a persecutor with hue and cry to follow, an apparitor to summon us, a bailiff to carry us, a serjeant to arrest, an attorney to plead against us, a gaoler to torment, a judge to condemn, still accusing, denouncing, torturing and molesting. ”

“ In criminal cases, if an accuser offered battle, the defendant was forced either to accept it or to confess his guilt, unless he could prove an alibi, or unless the accuser was himself notoriously guilty of the crime in question, and the accusation was evidently a mere device to shift the guilt to the shoulders of another ”

“ If the accused, or any of them, are found guilty by the jury, the jury shall fix the punishment by their verdict.
"An accessory is he who stands by and aids, abets, or assists, or who, not being present, aiding, abetting, or assisting, hath advised, encouraged, aided, or abetted the perpetration of the crime. He who thus aids, abets, assists, advises, or encourages, shall be considered as principal and punished accordingly. ”