Untitled

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2423, 22 December 1880, Page 2

Th Hit k is a prospect of the omniumyathcrum., cheap and nasty common jury system, shotting' gradually into disrepute. As the colony becomes educated and enlightened it is bound to go. Every one competent to express a valuable opinion on the subject admits that it works bady. The judges of our Supreme and District Courts, who ought to he able to give very good evidence on such a question, acknowledge that the common jury is a most unreliab.e and unsatisfactory tribunal. The criminal sessions just closed have not been without their startling effects. Sever 1 ! powerful illustrations of the convicting and non-convicting jury have been afforded. A youth who had borne a previously irreproachable character, is charged with stealing a watch from a drunken countryman. The latter, oecording to his own statement, allows the accused to decoy him into a lane in broad daylight, and relieve him of his time piece. Next morning the youth accosts a detective, and is speaking about a watch which he knows something about, when the owner comes up, and accuses him of stealing it. The accused delivers up the watch and tells a plausible tale about how it came into his posses, sion. In Court the prosecutor gives a hazy and hardly credible account of how he was robbed. He is positive ns to the individual who robbed him, and

ho is equally positive that when he passively allowed Ids wateb to be taken lie was quite sober. The accused told a tale which, if untrue, was certainly ingenious. There win a grave doubt as to whose story was absolutely correct, tbci positive prosecutor’s or the equally positive prisoner’s. Yet instead of adopting the general rule of giving the prisoner ihe benefit of the doubt, the jury find him guilty without leaving the box, and (lie alleged wateb stealer is sent back to complete bis twelve months in gaol, and branded a felon lor life.

So much for the convicting jury, and now for the non-convicting. Another young nian of somewhat doubtful antecedents is charged with burglariously entering (lie Timaru Post Ollice and pillaging the drawers. The valuables stolen were trilling, but that was no fault of the burglar who doubtless expected a .substantial booty. A very strong chain of circumstantial evidence is presented. A knife and a pair of pincers found on the scene of the robbery are identified as belonging to (be accused’s employer, a letter of a suspicions character is traced to bis sweetheart, a neat collection of stamps, corresponding with those that were stolen, is found in bis box just as be is on the eve of quitting the colony, and altogether a ca.se, that would bang any criminal outside of Dunedin, and which exhibits great pains and assiduity on the part of the detective engaged, is presented. Yet the jury, after an hour’s consider.tion, return a verdict of “Not guilty,”stating that the evidence is insufficient. It will he remembered that when the Dewar tragedy was examined in Dunedin it leaked out that the jury refused to convict because there was no one alive who saw the crime committed. The jury in Bound’s cane appear to have been actuated by the fact that the burglar was not personally recognised. Need we say that if direct evidence of such a nature is insisted upon, burglars will he able to prosecute their calling without (he remotest chance of being convicted. Circumstantial evidence is allowed to he the- most reliable of all evidence in the tracing of crime, but apparently it has entirely lost its weight in the minds of the intelligent common jury. The sooner the present jury system is altered Ihe better will it be for society and especially for the officers of justice who must feel froquenlly disgusted at the way iu which (heir efforts are frustrated.