LAW COSTS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 395, 28 March 1908, Page 3

LAW COSTS.

The Thaw Trial. The cost of the Thaw trial promises to establish a new world’s record. Already more than ,£IOO,OOO has been expended for the defence alone. The first trial cost the prisoner and his family no less than ,£70,000, of which Mr Delmas, the accused’s principal advocate, received ,£20,000. The small army of detectives employed has disbursed something like ,£IO,OOO ; while several expert medical witnessess received ,£ 1000 apiece, and a firm of lawyers temporarily retained by Mr Thaw oh the day following the tragedy was paid £SOOO for the b;ief period during which it was engaged in connection with the case. Assuming that the last trial cost as much as this abortive first one did, we get a total of ,£140,000. No criminal trial, either in America itself or in any other country, has ever approached anywhere near to this large sum. Even the prolonged and sensational Dreyfus case cost altogether, according to a joint statement issued by the French Government and the accused’s family, only about ,£26,000. The recent trial of Wood at the New Bailey, Eondon, involved the expenditure of approximately ;£iooo all told ; that of Hoiace Rayner, who shot Mr Whiteley, ,£BSO ; while the total cost of the trial of Devereux, the Kensal Rise murderer, was officially returned at ,£2500. This latter is a big sum lor England, where criminal trials are not usually partically expensive affairs, whatever may be said con-, ceruiug civil ones. Probably, however, it is Germany which holds record iu this direction, the average cost there for a murder case working out, according to official returns, at less than a five-pound note ; while the recent Harden criminal trial, the most sensational of its kind ever heard in that country, cost less than ,£3OO.