Improvidence

“ We have tried without avail laws making both briber and bribed equally punishable, because, as both are liable to punishment, both have the highest motive for secrecy—and evidence can hardly ever be obtained. ”

“ A doubt suggested by the ingenuity of counsel, or by your own ingenuity, not legitimately warranted by the evidence, or the want of it, or one born of a merciful inclination to permit the defendants to escape the penalty of the law, or one prompted by sympathy for them or those connected with them, is not what is meant by a reasonable doubt. A 'reasonable doubt,' as that term is employed in the administration of the criminal law, is an honest, substantial misgiving, generated by the proof, or the want of it. ”

“ But, Miss Dare, whatever anxiety I may have shown in procuring the conviction of a man I believed to be a criminal, I have never wished to win my case at the expense of justice and right; and had I been told before you came to the stand that you had been made the victim of a deception calculated to influence your judgment, I should have hastened to set you right with the same anxiety as I do now. ”

“ Fear, prejudice, malice, and the love of approbation bribe a thousand men where gold bribes one. An honest verdict is the result not of fear, but of courage; not of prejudice, but of candor; not of malice, but of kindness. Above all, it is the result of a love of justice. Allow me to say right here that I believe every solitary man on this jury wishes to give a verdict exactly in accordance with this testimony and exactly in accordance with the law. ”

“ If I can show you that there is a doubt—a doubt of the faintest or slightest shadow—his lordship will tell you that I have the right to demand a verdict of ‘not guilty,’ and I say that such a doubt cannot but exist. ”

“ But when we come to the third alleged misstatement I feel that the plaintiff’s case is made out. I mean the statement of the objects for which the money was to be raised. These were stated to be to complete the alterations and additions to the buildings, to purchase horses and vans, and to develop the supply of fish. A mere suggestion of possible purposes to which a portion of the money might be applied would not have formed a basis for an action of deceit. There must be a misstatement of an existing fact; but the state of a man’s mind is as much a fact as the state of his digestion. ”

“ But conscience is, after all, only a name for our hidden prosecutor, judge and jury, and our sentences are light or heavy depending upon how many witnesses we can persuade to perjure themselves. No man lives who has not at some time used bribery in the mythical court room of his heart. ”

“ But the fact of knowledge, a jury might infer from very slight evidence, and my client’s seeming bastardy and strange ignorance of her father, and of her mother even, beyond the certainty that she once lived and cared well for her young days, were better fitted to excite suspicion and clothe her in the garb of an adventurer, than to secure pity or be urged as arguments of innocence. ”

“ And as the evidence is given to you step by step the presumption stands as a guard between innocence and the evidence that is being given, until at last, when your mind is satisfied, when your judgment has come to the conclusion that the men are guilty, the presumption is wiped out, and you are no longer to presume the man innocent. ”

“ Still, his interest in this particular defendant had become visible.
"Have you any idea of the consequences of perjury?"
"No, sir."
"Do you understand what perjury is?"
"It's to lie."
"Do you tell lies?" ”

“ Thus, my lords, an inquiry appears, upon every supposition, useful and necessary; but I cannot comprehend how it can be prosecuted by any other method, than that of proposing an indemnity to those who shall make discoveries. Every wicked measure, my lords, must involve in guilt all who are engaged in it; and how easily it may be concealed from every other person, may be shown by an example of a crime, which no man will deny to have sometimes existed, and which, in the opinion of most, is not very uncommon in this age. ”

“ And yet less, my lords, can I suspect, that those by whom he is accused, act from any motive that may influence them to desire a sentence not supported by evidence, or conformable to truth; or that they can wish the ruin of any man whose crimes are not notorious and flagrant, that they persecute from private malice, or endeavour to exalt themselves by the fall of another. ”

“ When an impatient creditor duns you, what more convenient than a plausible falsehood? When an appeal is made to your purse by some importunate borrower or beggar, you know well how to answer him by an untruth. Should you get into difficulty, you study what virtue there is in language, and use it to effect your end. When an inquisitive wife pests you with her troublesome inquiries, you have the example of an honorable Roman senator for telling her a lie; and when you have broken a promise, why, you know well how to excuse yourself by resorting to the same means that caused its violation. ”

“ Nay, if there were none at all, it would be enough to sustain this objection, that men of finite and limited judgment do inflict, on testimony which admits of doubt, an infinite and irreparable punishment. ”

“ Let those that judge be permitted to determine according as they think to be right, unless any one can show that they have taken bribes, to the perversion of justice, or can allege any other accusation against them, whereby it may appear that they have passed an unjust sentence ”

“ Nothing, my lords, is more obvious, than that this offer of indemnity may produce perjury and false accusation; nothing is more probable, than that he who is conscious of any atrocious villanies, which he cannot certainly secure from discovery, will snatch this opportunity of committing one crime more, to set himself free from the dread of punishment, and blot out his own guilt for ever, by charging lord ORFORD as one of his accomplices. ”

“ The wretch stained with crime—polluted with iniquity—for which, perhaps, the statute-book contains neither name nor indictment—whose trembling lips are eager to avow that guilt which, by confessing, he hopes may alleviate the penalty—this man, I say, is checked in his intentions—he is warned not, by any chance expression, to hazard a conviction of his crime, and told in the language of the law not to criminate himself. ”

“ I know that it has sometimes happened that the innocent have been tried and convicted—overwhelmed by a mass of circumstantial evidence—and that may be my case; nevertheless, even they have had the poor satisfaction of knowing for what they suffered. ”

“ And while a bad motive (malice) is seldom enough to give a cause of action, proof of its existence is a potent inducement to a jury to swell the assessment of damages, as evidence of bad character may induce them to reduce the damages to a derisory amount. ”

“ Let the way of bringing offenders to justice be direct, clear, and untrammelled. The technicalities of pleading, proof, and proceedings, in many of our States, are painfully absurd. To the minds of most men a criminal trial is a mysterious jumble. ”

“ 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." ”

“ But, my lords, this is not the only difference between the two cases; for he that discovers a bribe received by himself, has no motives of interest to prompt his evidence; he is only secured from suffering by his own discovery, and might have been equally safe by silence and secrecy; since the law supposes the crime out of the reach of detection, otherwise than by the confession of the criminal. ”

“ Is it not ridiculous for the government to insist upon such preposterous evidence? Which, if produced in due form, is a rule drawn up by the applicant’s physican, and sworn to by the witness—“cum grano salis,”—and in most cases amounts to perjury for charity’s sake. ”

“ Likewise those crimes, which render judgments of no effect, are greater crimes, than injuries done to one, or a few persons; as to receive money to give false judgment, or testimony, is a greater crime, than otherwise to deceive a man of the like, or a greater sum ”

“ In fact, the latter appears to me to do the most harm, it being worse to corrupt a judge by a speech than by a bribe, inasmuch as no one can corrupt a wise man with a bribe, though it is possible that he may with eloquence.
11. There is a second class of those men who, professing the science of the law, especially the interpretation of conflicting and obsolete statutes, as if they had a bridle placed in their mouths, keep a resolute silence, in which they rather resemble their shadows than themselves. ”

“ You may consider yourself fortunate—very fortunate—there is not enough evidence to convict you. Don’t flatter yourself that a breakdown in the prosecution clears your character. In the eyes of the law you may be clear, but morally, let me tell you, you are far from being so. ”

“ The chief forms of liability in which fraud, malice, and intent are said to be necessary elements, are deceit, slander and libel, malicious prosecution, and conspiracy, to which, perhaps, may be added trover. ”

“ In any case, when you have known fairly well a man sentenced and executed for murder—and on such evidence!—you never feel again like saying that “one doesn’t know” people who sue for breach of promise. ”

“ There is no opening for transactions of this sort, nor for any one's power or influence; in fact,—and this gives questions of law a more important and a more holy character,—a judge cannot be corrupted even by a bribe in cases of this sort. 73That very witness of yours who dared to say “that he had been seen to do...” in a case where he could by no possibility know even of what the man was accused—even he would not venture to decide that a dowry was due to a husband which the woman had promised without the consent of her trustee. ”

“ We are of opinion that a motion to dismiss the writ of error must prevail since it is settled that a conviction for a criminal, although summary, contempt is for the purposes of our reviewing power a matter of criminal law not within our jurisdiction on error. ”

“ But so far as my clients are concerned, everything they have, everything they love, everything for which they hope, home, friends, wife, children, and that priceless something called reputation, without which a man is simply living clay, everything they have is at stake, and everything depends upon your verdict. I want you to understand that everything depends upon your decision, and yet my clients with their world at stake, home, everything, everything, ask only at your hands the mercy of an honest verdict according to the evidence and according to the law. ”

“ It was very strange that a solid truth, backed up by abundant and irreproachable evidence, presented under the strict rules of law and the solemn sanction of an oath, should be upset and shattered by a flimsy falsehood told by an unknown adventurer, heard unawares by a listening child, and denied a proper entrance into court. ”

“ The charge looks a grave one, good reader, and perhaps already some notion is trotting through your head about forgery or embezzlement; you think of widows rendered desolate, or orphans defrauded; you lament over the hard-earned pittance of persevering industry lost to its possessor ”

“ A legal friend has volunteered an opinion, that certain supposed defects in the alleged deed evince its spuriousness, and even if genuine, its inefficiency. His words are, "The absence of all legal consideration, that is to say, valuable consideration, such as money, or money's worth; or good consideration, such as natural love and affection, would render the deed void, or voidable, as a mere nudum pactum. ”

“ FORGERY.—Forgery is the false making of an alteration of a writing to the prejudice of another man's right. Forgery may be committed of any writing, which, if changed, would operate as the foundation of another man's liability. Hence a check may be forged, an assignment of a legal claim, an indorsement on any negotiable document, an acceptance of a bill of exchange, a letter of recommendation, a railroad pass or railroad ticket. ”

“ A more terrible fate than that of one who has been convicted and punished for an offence which he has not committed, on the strength of a chain of plausible circumstantial evidence, can hardly be conceived. ”

“ Juries have for centuries made the basic decisions between guilt and innocence and between criminal responsibility and legal insanity upon the basis of the facts, as revealed by all the evidence, and the law, as explained by instructions detailing the legal distinctions, the placement and weight of the burden of proof, the effect of presumptions, the meaning of intent, etc. ”

“ It is painful to a court ever to express an opinion that results in an imputation of wilful perjury, and, as much as it is possible in this case, we will put out of view the clashing testimony of individuals, and consider the case upon those facts concerning the truth of which the evidence leaves no doubt. ”

“ You think you will hoodwink the jury and get off. I hear you are a lawyer, an advocate, an old hand at a speech. Have you any judge to suggest who will be proof against such an experienced corrupter as you? ”

“ A second improbability which rises as much higher than that to which it is opposed, as the crime would be higher, since it would be more deliberate in the girl, and as her character is better than that of street robbers and Gipsies. ”

“ They will call upon all the testimony which incredulity can require, to persuade them that, in passed ages, men there were—men, too, deemed worthy of popular recompense—who, for some small pecuniary retribution, hired themselves out to do any deeds of pillage, devastation, and murder, which might be demanded of them. ”

“ Being, by a certain quidam, whom the finger of heaven, whilst we are here speaking about the matter, has severely touched, persuaded, and bribed, partly to conceal, and even partly to deny the insanity of the testatrix, at the time when the will was made, which robs the true heirs of their due. ”