Wellington Sympathetic Juries

Feilding Star, Volume VIII, Issue 54, 16 October 1886, Page 3

Wellington Sympathetic Juries

Commenting on the number of acquittals at the last sittings of the {Supreme Cwurt in Wellington, the Tobt makes the following severe remarks : — " We cannot undertake to say where the fault lies, where there is iv. the lower Courts too great a readiness to commit for trial, whether the cases are not got up with sufficient care, or whether Wellington jurymen are too much inclined to lean to mercy's side, and too ready to give weight to ingenious arguments on prisoners' behalf ; but we think the general verdict of the people will be that the result of the late sessions has not tended to increase public respect for the present system of trial by jury, ■which is always declared to be the palladium of British liberty. . There will remain in the public mind a suspicion that the system occasionally conduces to the protection of license as well as liberty, and results in a miscarriage of justice. We can well imagine a guilty man infinitely preferring to be tried by a jury instead of >>y a judge, while an innocent man. would act wisely, in most instances, iv preferring the latter. The Times follows suit and says : — " In some of these instances the verdicts were entirely unsupported by the weight of evidence, which, indeed went directly the other way. No doubt';the jurymen had some doubts of which they gave the prisoners the benefit, but they apparently overlooked the rule so often laid down that these .must be " reasonable" doubts such as would influence them in^&be transactions of everyday life. Norought it to be forgotten by juries that they are under a solemn oath to dp strict justice — "to well and truly try"— the prisoners — wholly irrespective of their personal feelings or sympathies. It is creditable to their humanity to be sorry for a prisoner •who may have fallen from high estate into deserved digrace, but their oath should restrain them from allowing such sentiments to influence their verdict. [PEB UNITED PBEBS ASSOCIATION.] "Wellington, October 15 Before discharging the common jury this morning Judge Richmond said : « Gentlemen, before discharging you I have a word to say to you. I Jay it, you will quite understand deliberately in sorrow, not in anger. It is my deliberate opinion that in the criminal sittings you have been just attending, the result has -been the juries liave been made fools of, that the court has been degraded- deeply degraded— and that crime has been encouraged."