The Daily News TUESDAY, AUGUST 30. "TWELVE GOOD MEN AND TRUE."

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 120, 30 August 1910, Page 4

The Daily News TUESDAY, AUGUST 30. "TWELVE GOOD MEN AND TRUE."

In the Supreme Court the other day a case was held up because a juryman had transgressed the laws of sobriety. The Judge mentioned that in forty years of experience he had never known of such a, case. The summoning of juries is absolutely haphazard. As long as the men on the list are sane and have good hearing, this is all that is necessary, and, this being so, the average jury gives magnificent service. The fact that a Judge who has seen many thousands of men on juries has never before known a case of insobriety is evidence that the average juror, while he may dislike the forced service, gives his very best attention to it. In New Zealand, the majority of the men called to serve on juries are working men, and this class of man is much more likely to arrive at a true decision than men whose real instincts have been dulled by "cramming." If a jury of twelve working men, giuided entirely by common sense and their own instincts of fair play, come to a decision, •in tour opinion the decision is much more likely to be morally right than the decision of the Lord Chief Justice of England, who has thousands of precedents to guide him. That judges oannot always entirely trust the conclusions of twelve men was shown the other day . when a judge re-called a party to a case and- intimated that he did not believe the jury's decision to (be correct. The jury system is a safeguard, and although the legal method of throwing dust in the eyes of jurymen has been established by long custom, the lawyer is not always successful in making a jury wander from essential points. It is a debatable point whether what is practically a selection of jurymen is fair. A juryman, except under special, circumstances, cannot get exemption from service, but frequently if to the observant barrister he appears to be unsuitable to his case, he "changes" him, and the joyfully released cools ii.'; heels l in the portals of the Court. Any ma,, who !: p -° had the good (or ill) fortune to sO T e on j'"ieo ;v :11 bear us out when we s*,' that L!'° thought put into the work is prodigious, that almost invariably the decisions are the outcome of true understanding, and that no other way of deciding important eases cou^l';" half as just and satisfactory. In the matter ot from service on juries .there are some anomalies, the most curious l being that a volunteer soldier is not liable. The supposition is that while he is in panel the Russians or sonebody else may land on our shores and that he will not be able to get to the shores in time to heave the enemy into the sea. Never in the history of the New Zealand Supreme Court has the enemy called on us while the I Court has been in session. Not long, ago, the coroner's jury was a common and disappointing circumstance., Nowadays the dreary jury except in cases where there may have been personal violence or mystery, is done away with. The coroner's jury necessarily had to be entirely guided by the medical evidence, and as the coroner must also be guided by the same evidence, it was not necessary to make a body of men do what the Magistrate could do so easily. The circumstance that in the cities coroners* juries were generally composed of the same men for each successive inquest, was probably the reason of the institution of the plain coronial enquiry. The State became tired'of seeing dismissed jurors taking their fees to the nearest hostelry, and waiting thereafter for .the next corpse. If it had been a coroner's jury who had: erred against sobriety the other day, nobody would have been surprised, and it is worth remark that the average common juror is generally a most earnest, conscientious worker for the State. The jury system is useful as a braike to the humors of judges, for it is certain that much law .clouds the natural instinct of .man, and th*t .the instinct of even the most eminent judge might go astray if he were left "on his own" to deal with criminal cases.