CERTAIN CRIMINAL CASES. To be Heard in Camera.

Free Lance, Volume VI, Issue 269, 26 August 1905, Page 6

CERTAIN CRIMINAL CASES. To be Heard in Camera.

MR. Justice Edwards heard a case the other day that involved the taking of evidence which one would not care to discuss in the bosom of one's family. Although he had no power to clear the court, he suggested that only those who were not respectable would remain. The court was immediately cleared. The Hon. John Rigg, in the Legislative Council, speaking on the Criminal Code Amendment Bill, objected to the power given under this bill to cle-ar the courts of all persons but officials, reporters, and counsel at the hearing of cases of offences against girls. • * Mr. Rigg fears, presumably, that justice may not be done. That, in fact, the hearing of nasty details by as many persons as can crowd into a court — quite an inconsiderable number of people, in fact — is essential to the welfare and morality of the people. In the first place, why do people crowd to the hearing of these particular cases ? To see justice meted out or to gratify a prurient curiosity ? Assuredly the latter, for if it were not so the average court habitues would crowd equally to the hearing of a simple debt case. If it could be shown that the morbid neurotic person who makes a point of attending divorce, assault, murder, and other trials were getting any good from the hearing. or that a fairer trial was possible only with a curious audience to drink in the details, it would be absolutely wrong te clear the courts. It is apparent to the merest novice that witnesses in these cases must necessarily be more frank when they know that galleries full of women and basements full of men are not leering at them.

The public can get all the sensational evidence they want from the daily papers, and it is sufficient for the purposes of justice that the public are made acquainted with the nature of the crime, the name of the criminal, the comments of the judge, and the sentence. Wealth of detail doesn't minimise crime, and a big audience don't learn how to avoid criminality bv hearing how people became criminals. It is absurd, too, to assume that the publication of minute particulars is a deterrent to the criminal charged. ♦ * * The law punishes the criminal, and the newspapers have no special call to heap still further punishment on him, or to cater to the morbid craving of a large section of the public by detailing stuff that cannot affect the issue of the case, seeing that it appears after decision. The right to hear these cases without an audience is no encroachment on the privileges of the "people." The "people" don't go to court to listen to these cases. Only a section of rabid sensation-mongers enjoy the ear-tickling they get there.