"TRIAL BY JURY."

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XIV, Issue 233, 13 October 1879, Page 2

"TRIA L BY JURY."

To THE EdITOK OP THE " EVENING MAIL." Sir — Will you kindly inform me whether it is legal and usual in Nelson for the verdicts of coroner's juries to be amended and their sense altered by an acting ooroner at the suggestion or dictation of a witness after the said verdict has been written and actually given. At the inquest on the body of the iate lamented and respected Captain John Heifer a verdict was arrived at by the jury in the presence, and with the apparent concurrence, of the Justice of the Peace acting as coroner, after which a witness in the case intervened and dictated to the said Justice a verdict which he asserted to be in the " proper form," but different both in language and sense from that agreed on by. the coroner's jury. The Justice for a long time insisted on this being " the verdict," but the jury, including myself, being stubborn, and feeling themselves in the right, insisted on their language and sense being entered as the verdict. This deadlock lasted above an hour and a half, when all parties being hungry, and some of us impatient, |we were driven to a compromise, which resulted in the verdict given. As foreman of the said | jury I wish to know whether " the jury " is to give the " verdict," or whether the jury is j simply to endorse by their signatures a verdict dictated by a medical witness after the said jury has given its verdict with "the apparent concurrence of the Justice acting as Coroner. The original verdict was, after recital of time and place:— 'That the death of the saiil John Heffer was caused by disease of the heart accelerated by a, blow from one of the luuatic patients whilst the deceased was in the performance of his duty." J am. &c, T. It. Hackett.