LEGAL ABERRATIONS.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIII, Issue 70, 23 March 1907, Page 14

LEGAL ABERRATIONS.

« • A recent caso in one of the New York Magistrate's Com I? involved the liberty of a well-known pick pocket, who was charged vith stealing a valuable watch from the person of an eminently respectable man. Tneidentally, it afforded a striking example of the justice of Mr. Bumble's dictum that •'the lor is a h-.sc." Before the hearing came on in tho Magistrate's Court, a claimant appeared, who said that the . watch had bevn stolen from him a year bofoi'e, and when the prosecutor entered tho witness-box, he admitted at once that he bought tho watch from a pawnbroker. Ine pawnbroker remembered tho salo, and described the person who had pawned it, whom the police professed to recognise as an habitual thief. Tho second thief's lawyer then secured his client's acquittal on tho ground that, the watch being stolen picperty in tho first place, the man from whom it was stolen tho second time had no title to it, nnd, therefore, it could not be stolen from him. The magistrate held that this was good law, and, encouraged by his success, the lawyer urged that tho watch should be 'restored to his client on tho ground that ho, as tho last possessor,' had tho best litlo to it, the original owner not being able to prove where ho had bought it. Tho magistrate ordered that this should be done, and as he left the court tho prisoner handed tho watch to his counsel in payment of his fee.