CHIEF JUSTICE OF DISTRICT COURTS.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume VI, Issue 921, 14 October 1879, Page 2

CHIEF JUSTICE OF DISTRICT COURTS.

At the late Supreme Court sittings at Nelson, the Chief Justice said he thought it well to address them again on a subject upon which he had 'spoken to them before, namely, the advisability of so altering the law as to allow the District Court to adjudicate upon [such cases as they were called on to-day. The defect was that m giving jurisdiction to the District Courts the Legislature had excepted certain cases which ;were to go to the superior Courts, leaving all others for the ,, Courts of Quarter. Sessions, the resu^ being that only such cases as perjury, forgery, and others involving intricate points of law went to the higher Court. Here, however, the Legislature had.not been satisfied with making these exceptions, but had shut-out from the District Court all cases m which the punishment to be awarded might exceed seven years. In regard to the allocation of punishment according to the offence, a wide margin was left to the Judge, there being many of whioh the term of imprisonment was not to be less than three years but might extend to fourteen, the object being to give the Court power to**nx the punishment m accordance with the circumstances of the case, rather than the gravity of the offence. The result of this was that many cases were thus excluded from the jurisdiction of the District Court on account of this limit. The exception was one that should be done away with, and it might be done by a very simple alteration of the law. Jurors were summoned regularly for the District Court sessions, and the same juries, with the same amount of inconvenience and loss of time could dispose of cases for which the whole machinery of the Supreme Court was now required. With regard to the necessity of . Grand Juries his opinion was that they should be continued, but with this modification that they should only be summoned when there were cases m which the Crown Prosecutor refused or declined to present a Bill. In such cases a private prosecutor might have the right to apply to the Judge of "the Supreme Court to have a jury empanelled, because the Government of the day might m some instances decline to prosecute for many reasons which they might suppose.