THE Wairarapa Age. MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, MARCH 17, 1908. ILLEGITIMATELY LEGAL.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9041, 17 March 1908, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age. MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, MARCH 17, 1908. ILLEGITIMATELY LEGAL.

j The license which is allowed to counsel in criminal procedure in the j Law Courts is one of the most flagI rant anomalies in connection with the administration of the law, which I is also supposed to embody justice at i least of a rudimentary character. Fortunately, nowadays, there are 1 comparatively few legal practitioners who exceed the bounds of decorum, in their endeavour to score a win, because a high sense of honour pervades the practitioner as a general rule; but there are occasionally to be found amongst members of the legal profession those who do not scruple to use every means to blacken the characters of witnesses who are opposed to them, or accused persons to whom they are opposed. Base insinuation and scandalous innuendo are the weapons which such men use in cross-examination, and many a witness, who rri'ay be perfectly honest, goes out of Court with a certain amount of mud sticking to him, while an accused man leaves the dock, for prison or freedom, with a blacker coating than the law itself has been able to cover him with. Why judges permit such conduct on the part of unscrupulous lawyers in Courts of Law is incomprehensible. It cannot be said that "custom requires it, and the law demands it." It is a relic of a barbarous age, and Judges and Bar should take steps to remove such a blot from the escutcheon of Law. We have, in time past, seen the iniquity to which we refer conspicuous in New Zealand Courts, but it is gratifying to know that such occurrences are now of the rarest; but in the Australian States j they are still somewhat unpleasantly '

frequent. Only a few days ago an exhibition of the sort of legal indecency to which we have alluded took place in the Sydney Quarter Sessions, when a Crown Prosecutor used every means in his power to sei.ure a conviction by unwarrantably putting questions to the accused which were intended to leave an impression upon the jury that, apart from legitimate evidence, it had before it an unmitigated ruffian. An ex-bank official found himself, upon small pretext, in the clutches of the law, and the prosecutor for the Crown was not content with the facts as they were elicited in the ordinary course; so he set about the "mud-siinging" process of examination, when the accused proceeded to give evidence on his own behalf. The latter was asked if he had not been dismissed from the service of a bank on account of a drunken spree? The man resented the "scandalous imputation," but the judge sternly demanded an answer. The answer came in the most convincing form. The manager of the bank was called, and said there was no truth in the calumny. Accused, after fourteen years' service, had left the institution to better himself. The clients had given him a purse of sovereigns, and the Bank supplemented the tribute by a present of twelve months' salary. The next insinuation was that the accused had set fire to premises where he had carried on business,and then there was another — that accused had levied blackmail. These were not pushed, because there was no ground for pushing them; they were only used as a means to an end. They were, however, utterly disproved, as was another insinuation that accused had been warned off the Randwick racecourse. Counsel for the accused protested, vehemently against such an attack by the Crown upon a man's character, and the jury supported his protest most effectively. The foreman, on behalf of his colleagues, rose at this stage and told the Crown Prosecutor they did not wish to hear his address, and informed the Judge that they were not concerned to listen to his summing up. They took the case into their own hands, and found the accused not guilty. This circumstance should be a death-blow to stschi umscTupalous practices in the New South Wales Courts, and go to the credit of the jury system whenever there is an agitation for its abolition.