A MURDER TRIAL.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VIII, Issue 635, 17 January 1914, Page 7

A MURDER TRIAL.

"THB TERROR OF THE SCENE. 1 '

To the trained mind of the lawyer an 'intricate case, in which only civil interests are involved, provides perhaps the fullest opportunity for watching the expert sword-play between two leaders who are fitly armed for tb«ir task ; but from the more human and dramatic point of view it i 6 the criminal court in an assize town that more often attracts the presence of the younger student.

A murder trial where the man whose life is in the balance stands before you in the dock during the long hours of a protracted hearing, becomes, as the case advances, absorbing, and even oppressive, in its interest. The very air of the crowded court seems charged with the message of this one human story ; it is difficult, as the sordid and pitiable facts are gradually revealed, to conceive that there is any other drama than that which is being enacted within those four walls. And as the trial drags its course,, with each new link in ths cvidm:e seeming to fcrgc a cha'.'n that is gradually drawing closer aromi 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 can recall many such tria's during my brief service on the Northern Circuit, and sometimes \vh:n the hearing outran the hours commonly allotted for the sittings of the court, and when judge and jury, by mutual consent, had agreed that tho end should be reached before the end of the day. the inherent solemnity of the scene would receive an added sen.se of awe and terror as the fading daylight gradually deserted the building, and the creeping shadows half shrouded the faces of the spectators eagerly and silently intent upon every word that fell from the judge in his summing up—whose grave countenance, only partly illumined by the candles that had been set upon his desk, stood in dreadfal contrast with that of the prisoner who confronted aim, with ashen face like that of a spectre in the darkness. And once I remember, when the fatal verdict had been given, and the judgd had passed to the dreadful task of pronouncing sentence— a task never in my experience discharged without the signs of visible emotion—the terror of the scene was st'ill further heightened as the prisoner, shrieking for mercy, held fast to the bar of the dock, a nd was only at last removed by force to the cells below.—J. C Carr, in the "Tele' ?;raph.' J