Trial by ordeal

“ 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. ”

“ Why, there on the Plaza you spoke in their their defense!"
"No, sir! No, sir! I did not! With the last breath that is in my body, sir, I will defend any man's right to trial trial by jury. I will defend any man's right to all the safeguards prescribed by law—but seek to have have guilty men acquitted, no! ”

“ Should not the example of the law be followed, which is so tender in criminal cases, that delinquents are often found not guilty, for want of legal evidence, at the same time that the court, the jury, and every one present at the trial feel the strongest moral conviction of their guilt? ”

“ But we desire to add that, if there be evidence on which reasonable men could find a verdict of guilty, the determination of the guilt or innocence of the prisoner is a matter for the jury, and for them alone. ”

“ Their claim should be evaluated by analyzing the real nature of criminal contempts and applying the policy of the constitutional requirement of trial by jury in 'allcrimes' and 'all criminal prosecutions.' [36]
5. ”

“ If we rid ourselves of the assumption that we can measure the moral culpability of the accused, the whole process of a criminal trial consists in the assemblage of facts, the discussion, and the decision upon the evidence. For the classical school, on the other hand, such a trial has been regarded as a succession of guarantees for the individual against society, and, by a sort of reaction against the methods of legal proof, has been made to turn upon the private conviction, not to say the intuition, of the judge and counsel. ”

“ I spoke of a trial as now inevitable."
"You mean something more than this inquest?"--in the same tone, but a little more deliberately.
"Yes. This is only an inquiry into the place, time, and cause of death. No one is on trial for a crime as yet."
"You mean"--without any variation in accent--"that some one will be tried for the murder of my late husband?" ”

“ The methods to be employed to bring about reformation must often be severe and painful, and one of these methods is shock, shock sharp and sudden enough to loosen the incrustations of evil habit, and to shake a wicked nature down to its foundations. The purpose of the trial of a criminal in a court of justice, and of the verdict in which the trial culminates, is to supply such a shock, a searching and terrible experience, yet salutary and indispensable in order that better things may ensue. ”

“ Prisoner at the bar, you have been accused of the great crime of labouring under pulmonary consumption, and after an impartial trial before a jury of your countrymen, you have been found guilty. Against the justice of the verdict I can say nothing: the evidence against you was conclusive, and it only remains for me to pass such a sentence upon you, as shall satisfy the ends of the law. ”

“ And as the trial drags its course, with each new link in the evidence seeming to forge a chain that is gradually drawing closer around the wretched being who stands before you in the dock, the intensity of the situation becomes so great and so strained that one is almost tempted to believe that the whole world is awaiting that one word from the lips of the jury which shall set him free once more or send him to his doom. ”

“ I shall now consider the case for the prosecution in detail. And first I shall show you that I have been brought to trial here in violation of law and justice, not on the chance of eluding your judgment—for I would commit my life to your decision, even if you were bound by no oath to pronounce judgment according to law, since I am conscious that I have done no wrong and feel assured that you will do me justice: no, my purpose in showing you this is rather that the lawlessness and violence of my accusers may bear witness to you of their better feeling towards me. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Every man sees that the jury is but a troublesome delay, great charge, and of no use in determining right and wrong, and therefore the trials by them may be better abolished than continued; which were a strange new-found conclusion, after a trial so celebrated for many hundreds of years. ”

“ An important trial has all the high interest of a most exciting narrative, whose catastrophe is yet to come, and where so many influential agencies are in operation to mould it. The proofs themselves, the veracity of witnesses, their self-possession and courage under the racking torture of cross-examination, the ability and skill of the advocate, the temper of the judge, his character of rashness or patience, of doubt or decisiveness ”

“ But, my Lord, (says Junius) since Judges have laboured, and not unsuccessfully, to destroy the substance of the trial, why should they suffer the form of the verdict to remain [3] ? Why force twelve honest men, in palpable violation of their oaths, to pronounce their fellow-subject a guilty man, when, almost at the same moment, they are forbidden to enquire into the only circumstance which, in the eye of law and reason, constitutes guilt—the malignity or innocence of his intentions? ”

“ But if it is important that the accused should be convicted and sentenced and that, perhaps with a view to further developments, the testimony as it appears should be kept from some conspirators still at large, it is of vastly greater importance that the trial should be absolutely fair, not only in spirit but also in appearance. ”

“ That protection of the law had been thrown around the men on trial to see that they should have a fair hearing, and that the jury should render a fair verdict. All evidence that was not competent had been excluded, and, wherever a question of doubt had arisen, His Honor, the judge, exercising his natural instincts of mercy, had solved that doubt for the benefit of the accused. ”

“ I have accustomed myself much to observe men, and the way in which they act, under particular circumstances, and I never yet saw one who owned he had a fair and impartial trial in every particular, and yet declared himself innocent, unless he was innocent. There has been always a something which he thought unfair--a cause why he had been cast, as it is termed; either the judge was wrong, or the jury was wrong, or the witnesses were perjured, or the counsel for the prosecution had acted unfairly, or something or another had given an unfavourable turn to the trial. ”

“ The circumstances which have been proved against you are fresh in the recollection of the Court, and are such as cannot leave the least doubt in the mind of any person who has beard your trial, of the guilt in which you have been involved, and of the magnitude of that guilt. ”

“ It had its origin in their honesty, their justice, their humanity and truth.—And never among all the inventions of men, has any mode of trial been devised, which administers law, so effectually for the promotion of those great qualities, as the trial by jury. The people have clung to it with a tenacity that showed how truly they estimated its value. ”

“ Excluding probative evidence years after trial, when a new trial may be a practical impossibility, will often result in the release of an admittedly guilty individual who may pose a continuing threat to society. ”

“ Whoever takes the trouble to study the faces of the jury during trial, comes to the conclusion that the speeches of the prosecution and defense are the most important things in the trial, that they absorb most of the attention of the jury, and that the question of guilt or innocence does not depend upon the number and weight of the testimony but upon the more or less skilful interpretation of it. ”

“ I have described my eleven days' trial—my eleven days' agony—for after nearly a year in prison a human being is nothing but a lump of suffering flesh and nerves: the sooner the procedure is altered, the sooner the judge's interrogatory —inevitably partial and misleading—is suppressed, the sooner an overwhelmingly more important part is given to the cross-examination of the prisoner and all the witnesses, and the sooner the jury at a trial for murder is kept together and prevented, as it is in England, from having any communication with the outside world—the better. ”

“ The trial by jury ever has been, and I trust ever will be, looked upon as the glory of the English law.... It is the most transcendent privilege which any subject can enjoy or wish for, that he cannot be affected in his property, his liberty, or his person, but by the unanimous consent of twelve of his neighbors and equals. ”

“ Could it know with omniscient certainty, beforehand, who is a murderer, it might take from him the trial by jury without offence to the eternal principles of justice. It is because the law cannot know with infallible certainty, beforehand, who is a murderer, that it provides the trial by jury to determine the question. ”

“ But this division of crimes into two classes should not be admitted, if the consequences of impunity were in proportion to the probability of the crime. It should be considered, that a person accused, whose guilt or innocence is not determined for want of proofs, may be again imprisoned for the same crime, and be subject to a new trial, if fresh evidence arises within the time fixed. ”

“ The trial by jury, then, gives to any and every individual the liberty, at any time, to disregard or resist any law whatever of the government, if he be willing to submit to the decision of a jury, the questions, whether the law be intrinsically just and obligatory? ”

“ If a jury consent, at the dictation of the court, as to either law or evidence, to render a verdict, on the strength of which they have reason to believe that a man's property will be taken from him and given to another, against their own notions of justice, they make themselves morally responsible for the wrong. ”

“ Another thing: criminal trials, which are ever the most interesting to the public, are not managed by the fag-end of the law, as at the Old Bailey; and the counsel for the prisoner is not limited to legal exceptions in the course of the trial, cross-questionings of witnesses, and motions in arrest of judgment and mitigation of punishment, after the jury have returned their verdict, and are beyond the reach of his eloquence, however touching or powerful. ”

“ Yet, gentlemen, there is a view in which I am entitled to call your attention to the former situation and circumstances of this unfortunate gentleman; for unfortunate I must call him, be the result of the present trial life or death. In deciding on evidence in support of a criminal charge, the former character of the prisoner, his probable temptations to commit the offence with which he is charged, must ever be a material consideration. ”

“ In criminal cases, Blackstone says the oath of the jury in England is:
"Well and truly to try, and true deliverance make, between our sovereign lord, the king, and the prisoner whom they have in charge, and a true verdict to give according to the evidence." 4 Blackstone, 355.
"The issue" to be tried, in a criminal case, is "guilty," or "not guilty." The laws passed by a legislature can rarely, if ever, have anything to do with this issue. "Guilt" is an intrinsic quality of actions, and can neither be created, destroyed, nor changed by legislation. ”

“ Without this conditional privilege, even those wrongly accused are punished by a period of imprisonment while awaiting trial and are handicapped in consulting counsel, searching for evidence and witnesses, and preparing a defense. ”

“ A jury would not only judge what acts were really criminal, but they would judge of the mental capacity of an accused person, and of his opportunities for understand- ing the true character of his conduct. ”

“ Neither is it to be supposed, that the mild spirit of our laws will be so interpreted by judge and jury upon a trial for life, that out of two possible constructions that in preference shall be proceeded upon, which bears hardest against the prisoner at the bar. ”

“ In criminal cases, the atrocity of accusing a man of crime, and then condemning him unless he prove his innocence at his own charges, is so evident that a jury could rarely, if ever, be justified in convicting a man under such circumstances. ”

“ Att. My lord, we have done with our evidence for the King.
Then the Lord Chief Justice called upon the prisoner to make his defence; which he did, though at no great length, and in a very halting way, saying that he hoped the jury would not go about to take his life on the evidence of a parcel of country people and children that would believe any idle tale; and that he had been very much prejudiced in his trial ”

“ But whether a man shall be put upon his trial for crime without a presentment or indictment by a grand jury of his fellow-citizens depends upon the consequences to himself if he shall be found guilty. ”

“ On the other side of these thin walls the preparations are ready for his trial by a group of men, whose duty it will be anon to allow the justice of this realm to take its relentless course. The accused will stand self-convicted, yet innocent, before them. ”