The Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. SATURDAY, JANUARY 8, 1887. GRAND JURIES.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1451, 8 January 1887, Page 2

The Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. SATURDAY, JANUARY 8, 1887. GRAND JURIES.

The action of the Grand Jury at Christchurch the other day m throwing out the bill of indictment m the chargi of larceny upon which W. H. Zouch stood committed for trial is simply inexplicable, always supposing that the Grand Jurors either perused the depositions or examined the witnesses for themselves. For while we do not for a moment presume to say that the accused was guilty of the offence laid to his charge, we do. say, and we think our readers will agree with us, that the evidence as taken |before the committing Magistrates, and fully reported m our columns, destinctly .made out a prima fade case, and one which, as the Bench observed, was such as demanded investigation by a jury. And m writing these words, we mean investigation by a jury m open Court — not merely a secret enquiry such as that of a Grand Jury really is. In the present case, it happened that the same prisoner was committed for trial upon another charge, that of forgery, of which he was convicted, and hence, even if he were guilty of the further offence of embezment, there can scarcely be said to have been a miscarriage of justice, but it might easily have been otherwise, and we repeat that the decision of the Grand Jury that there was no case for investigation altogether passes our comprehension. It, "however, further strengthens us m the opinion which we have long entertained that Grand Juries might be dispensed with altogether, not only without inconvenience, but indeed with positive advantage. Time was that the respective privileges of the Crown and the people were much lest accurately defined than they are m the present day, and , when Grand Juries were a safe guard of the lieges against State prosecutions or persecutions. But we have changed all that, and the Grand Jury has survived its own raison (Titte and has become, m a word, an anachronism. Its functions, if not wholly supererogatory as being merely a reduplication of the Magisterial investigation which precedes commitment . for trial, are at most but revisory, and might be much better exercised by the Attorney-General or by the district Crown Prosecutor, while m so far as regards the presentments which from time to time Grand Juries, by their foreman, make to the presiding Judge, as to particular phases of crime, defects m the machinery of justice, or it may be m the arrangements for the ventilation or heating of courtrooms, and so on, and so on, these things could be just as well pointed out by 'the Judges themselves or by officers of the Court. Furthermore, seeing that as the Grand Jury panel is taken exclusively from the educated classes, it would be a positive gain to the efficiency of our Criminal Courts that those who now constitute our Grand Jurors should become available for service on the Petit Juries, which are indeed the palladium of public liberty and safety. We demur the doctrine that a man should be tried by his peers, if that is to be interpreted to mean that the ignorant are to be tried by the ignorant, the illiterate by the illiterate. Indeed, we go so far as to say that we think there should be an educational test for jury service, and that no man should be eligible as a juror who is unable to read or write. This will, no doubt, be the law some day, though, perhaps, public opinion is scarcely ripe as yet for so radical a reform, but that the preliminary step of abolishing the Grand Jury is one which might even now be taken with considerable advantage is, we think, very generally conceded. Mr Tole is evidently honorably ambitious to figure as a judicial reformer, and while he does well m proposing to abolish Coroners' Juries, would do still better if he would, at the same time, sweep away that other use* less excrescence of our judicial system, grandiloquently and somewhat invidiously, perhaps, yclept the Grand Jury.