The Ashburaton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 16, 1897. THE HALL CASE.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1908, 16 March 1887, Page 2

The Ashburaton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 16, 1897. THE HALL CASE.

Though the decision of the Court of Appeal m the case of Thomas Hall will, doubtless, be supported by judicial authorities beyond the bounds of New Zealand, and while, presumably, it must be accepted as a fact that the evidence relating to the attempted poisoning of Mrs Hall was improperly admitted m his trial for the murder of Captain Cain, the decision that this was so only goes to prove that the dictum that " common law is founded upon common sence" is not by any means of universal application, but that, on the contrary, common sense and common law are sometimes wholly at variance. For m all ordinary affairs of life the private judgment of individuals, and the judgment of the public, which is an aggregate of individuals, is largely, and properly, influenced by the considera- j tion of piecisely such circumstances ' rs m this case it has been decided should m law have been excluded from the cognisance of the jury. A man dies of poison, which poison it is clearly shown was not self administer^! Obviously it was administered to him by some one else. There are only a very few persons who have had access to him. One of those persons is shown to have been m possession of the very kind of poison administered, to have been studying the subject of poisons with special relation to this particular kind, to have administered that poison to another person from a certain motive of gain, and to have had the same motive of gain, for administering it to the man whose murder is under investigation, while it is not even suggested that any of the other persons who have had access to the murdered man had a like motive or had poison m their possession. Is it or is it not common sense m such a case that all these circumstances sheuld be taken into account, and is it not entirely just that they should be allowed weight m determining who is the guilty party? Obviously it is, and, we are entirely of the opinion that it is necessary that the Haw should be amended so as to enable every circumstance which tends to throw light upon a case to be presented either for or against a prisoner at his trial. Indeed while the case for the prisoner was most ably argued before the Court of Appeal, we are not by any means satisfied that the most was made of the case for tho Crcwn. It seerm to us that it might have been shown much more clearly that the poisoning of Captain Cain, and the attempted poisoning of Mrs Hall, were parts of one and the same criminal scheme, and had this been done to the satisfaction of the Court, then it appears to us that it is quite possible that the admissability of the evidence taken exception to might have been sustained. And here we cannot but sympathise with the feeling of our Timaru contemporary, the " South Canterbury Times," which, -m its article of Monday last, contends that the Crown should have employed the services of its ablest advocate, the Attorney-General, the journal I referred to alluding to this feature of the case m the following terms : — " It is with unfeigned regret, a regret so strong and so deep that we can hardly express it, that we pass censure upon the Attorney- General, Sir Robert Stout, for quitting his post. He began the prosecution, he carried the ship into action and he ought to have seen her out ol action, instead of retreating at a critical moment. Such a proceeding is unheard of at Home. As the Crown's chief officer of the law it wa9 his undoubted duty to have conducted this great prosecution from beginning to end, and his failure to do so has, he will find, lowered him much m the regard of the public. The people did think there was one strong incorruptible mind that would never falter before social position, power and wealth ; one true democrat who would be. true to the noble principles which he had so often and so ably expounded, Robert Stout ! The name was one to conjure by, and it is the very strength and depth of the popular regard which makes the disappointment bitter. We, who have revered and regarded f?ir Robert S'out more highly than we can say, confess to a feeling of disappointment and complete disenchantment." It is of course quite possible that even had the Crown been represented by the Attorney General the result might have been the same, but even if so the public would then have attributed the gross miscarriage of justice (for such it undoubtedly is) to ttie state of the law, ancj to that

•nly. That one so infinitely worse nan Caffrcy and Perm has escaped, while they have paid the penalty of their (ffence with their lives is th subject of universal regret, save for our reason ooly, viz, for the sake of the aged parent, of the criminal, for whom there is as universal a feeling of sympathy and commiseration. For their sakes it is better as it i?, but from every other point of view, the fact that a dry-as-dust legal refinement has interposed an impßnetrable shield between the sword of justice and one who had forfeited all claim to mercy is infinitely to be deplored.