COSTS GREAT AND SMALL

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 73, 16 March 1908, Page 4

COSTS GREAT AND SMALL

The cost of the Thaw trial promises to establish a new world's record. Already more than CIOIMKIU has been expended for the defence alone.

Tlie lir-t trial cost the prisoner and his family no less than £70,0(10. of which Mr. Delmas, the accused's principal advocate, received £20,000. The small army of detectives employed has disbursed something like £10,000; while several expert medical witnesses received £I,OOO apiece, and a firm of lawyers temporarily retained by Mr. Thaw on the day following the tragedy was- paid £5,000 for the brief period during which it was engaged in connection with the ease.

Assuming that the hist trial cost as much as this abortive first one did, we get a total of ICIKJ.Otr'J. No criminal trial, either in America it .self or in any other country, has ever approached anywhere near to this large sum. Kven the prolonged ajuf sensational Dreyfus ease cost altogether, according to a joint statement issued by the French Government and the accused's, family, only about £2b',ooo.

The recent trial of Wood at the New Bailey, London, involved the expenditure of approximately .CI.OOO all toll; that of Horace Uayner, who shot Mr. Whiteley. £850: while the total cost of the trial of Devereux, the Kensjl Rise murderer, was officially returned at £2,500.

This latter is- a big sum for England, where criminal trials are not usually particularly expensive affairs, whatever may be said concerning civil ones.

Probably, however, it- is Germany that holds the record in this direction, the average cost there of a murder case working out. according to the official return-, at le-s than a live-pound note; while the recent Harden criminal trial, tin- most sensational of its kind ever heard in that country, cost I«es Ilim am.