Poverty Bay Herald. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. GISBORNE, TUESDAY, DEC. 9, 1924. THE COURTS OF LAW.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume L, Issue 16606, 9 December 1924, Page 6

Poverty Bay Herald. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. GISBORNE, TUESDAY, DEC. 9, 1924. THE COURTS OF LAW.

We nre so’ nceuetomerl to Iho present

methods, followed in the courts of law, to ensure fair trial of persons and causes. Unit it is a little difficult 1,0 remember that it was not always so. Complaint is often made by the judges, the public, the press, and most loudly of all by litigants concerned, that tlie veracity of witnesses clops not keep stop with the efforts of the Judicature to avoid error in judgment. Deliberate false swearing is not as rare as it should be. Punishment for perjury does not. deter a willing liar. Allowing this to he' capable of improvement, it, still mast be said that very few persons, even if uninterested, can repeat words, that they have only hoard once, at all accurately; \ and in the ease of persons who are in- i terested—and these form the bulk of i litigants—the unconscious bias, flu: will to hear what is favorable, accounts for the greater part of inaccurate, evidence given to-day in the Courts. False testi- j mony, whether intentional or not, does not often defeat justice. All evidence given is carefully weighed. Cross- ' examination, rebutting evidence, and the gentle leading back of the witness into the calmer tracts of sanity, probability and truth, are generally effective in making .what, through the frailty of the unaided human mind, started oil in much obscurity and doubt. Occasionally the police and the Crown authorities, from the instability of the materials, amidst which ihey are always working, and the fallibility of man, which must in their minds bulk dispro- • portionate.y, because, they ever in contact with it, see justice falter; a mistake is made, an innocent person is convicted and punished. On the other hand a good many persons charged with punishable offences, through the cleverness of counsel, the sympathies of juries, or other favoring causes are distinctly lucky. They escape conviction; an escape often which could hardly have been expected upon a careful consideration of the evidence adduced at the trial. If wo wero asked to state a circumstances, as establishing (he fact that iiick does attend, fortuitously, the path of men, we would rely upon the escape from conviction of many individuals in dieted for misdemeanours. Lucky persons, who have so escaped, at all events, have had a fright. They may reform. It is better that a lew should thus be the recipients of the benevolence of the jury than that one person should be convicted though innocent, This fate, of wrongful conviction, twice happened in Adolf Reck in the Criminal Court in Kng'.and. He was convicted in 1895, and again in 1904, for the .same class of offences. He was innocent of all the charges iaid against him in 1895. He was also innocent of the additional charges brought against him in 1904. In 1895 he was sentenced to seven years' penal 'servitude. Ho served that sen- j fence. He was released on license in 1901. When again charged for similar offences in 1904 evidence that he could not have been guilty ill 1895 was quite wronglV excluded. At the time of the lirst trial, and, also at the second, the prosecution, fhe police, and the Home (Hive had in their possession documents which would have shown it to be impossible for Beck to have been the criminal. ft is not suggested that the prosecution purposely kept these back

in the first instance. Although screened by a committee, which subsequently was set up, it is not easy to agree with that committee's finding, that in the second trial no one was to blame. A word or two as to the real facts. A man named Smith was convicted in 1877 of the same class of frauds as Heck was charged with in 1895. A well-dressed man would stop a. maid servant, a chonu girl, or even ;i teacher of languages in Regent Street or Oxford Street, and ask her, "Are you not l.ady Evcrlon?": then he. would seem to recognise his mistake, apologise, and enter into conversation. Hv would explain that he was a Peer, giving variations of lite name of Lord Wilton. He was on his' way to the House of Lords. As he could not stay he would ask permission to call on the girl next day. When incalled he spoke of his huge wealth. He did not know how to spend it. He won id like, to install the girl as housekeeper in his great, house at. St. John's Wood. She ought .to have better Hollies and jewellery, though. So he. would write letters to sefernj dressmakers and give cheques on non-exist-ing hanks. lip would take her rings ns patterns for the size of those he would buy for her. Her brooches to have a black pearl set in each; her watch to get it repaired. They would ail be sent, back by a one-armed commissionaire in a couple of hours. His valet bad forgotten to put any money in his pockets that morning', so he would borrow her .spare cash to see him home, ibis tale appears to have been learnt by heart. At least seventy of these bogus cheques were presented within a year and a. half. One woman who had been defrauded met Beck in the street and gave him in charge. Thirteen of the. women then came forward and identified, Beck as the man who had defrauded them. The extraordinary thing was the gradual growth of certainty' these women developed, as the proceedings went on, as to Beck being the man. They identified, so they said, the smallest details—even his mole and scars. And he was not, and could not have been the man. John Smith was the man. There was no striking resemblance between Smith and Beck. It was not the case of a double. Yet the police in 1895 accepted Beck as Smith mainly, it would seem, because of the similarity of the frauds for which Smith was convicted in 1877. They assumed Heck to be Smith, and of course, relied upon the letters and cheques produced in support of the charge as being idenli<ai with, and in t'he same handwriting, as were those made evidence in the trial of Smith in 1877. They were in fact so identical, and exact in resemblance. They could only so he. They were written by the same hand. That hand was the hand of Smith. The error made, by the police was that from the similarity of evidence and documents they inferred that Beck was Smith and Smith was Beck. But while Smith was in gaol for his sentence in 1877 Beck, was indisputably shown to have been in l'eru. He was so resident from 1877 to 1882. It was clear that- there were two men, one named Smith who was in gao., and one named Beck who was in Bern. But Beck's conviction in 1895 and his second conviction in 1904 were based upon the conclusion which had been jumped at that he was Smith under another name. But Beck was not Smith and Smith had been convicted and.had served his sentence and was at large in j 1895 when .Ueck was tried and convicted I for the same kind of offence, exact in , its'details, as that for which Smith in 1877 had been found guilty. At the trial of Beck—to be scrupulously fair to Beck—the prosecution made on mention of the earlier crimes of Smith (assuming him to be. Beck). When Beck's counsel tried to' raise the irrefragable defence of. Smith's conviction the' prosecution objected that the earlier trial was irrelevant and likely to prejudice the jury against the prisoner. The Judge supported the objection.' The women all agreed that Beck was the culprit, Land on the false assumption that, he was Smith the evidence that must have proved him to be. Beck was excluded. This almost recalls the immortal case of Bardell versus Pickwick. There was no Criminal Court of Appeal in 1895. The conviction stood, and the ! sentence was served. In 1904 Beck | was again charged with the same, class I of offences, then being repeated in London. There were the same blunders aS is 1895, the same assumptions, and the same refusal to allow the production of evidence that must have cleared Beck. The jury again convicted this unfortunate man. Judge Grantham, however, was not satisfied. He respited judgment. Meanwhile Smith got reckless. While Beck, was in prison he began again. He was arrested. The host of women wjio had sworn away Beck's liberty now fasteneed -upon Smith. A : s;id feature of the case was that Scotland j Van!, although application was made. I refused ml Beck's trial to produce the I record of the distinctive marks of Smith, I An appeal to the Home Secretary also j failed to produce this record. It turned | out afterwards that the production of j the record must have cleared Beck as not possibly being Smith. In consequence, largely, of the case being taken up by the Spectator and other newspapers, free pardons • were granted to Beck in both cases and £SCCO compensation was given to him. An account of ! this rather serious miscarriage of justice , has been recently published l iy Messrs Hodge and Co. for the editor, Mr Eric R, Watson It is interesting to look backend compare old methods with new. The records of the Mayor's Court of London have been recently published. The work is reviewed in the Times literary supplement, from, which we quote below. This Court appears to have had far-reaching powers as regards disputes between citizens of Lyndon. The records cover the period 1208-1307. False testimony was reduced to a. fine art. The nnveracious witnesses, who were willing to come forward —no doubt for a. consideration—were called "oath-helpers." The name is suggestive. "The Court was stilTunder the influence of proof by oath-helpers, a system which is not easy to explain to-day, except by stating that when it first gained ground a man was expected to lie. freely but not to forswear himself. It was still common for a man who was sued for debt to come into Court with a varying number o? friends, who would swear that he did not owe the money. But the practice was already falling into disrepute. Dr. Holland has toid us recently how Chief Justice Beresford , once burst forth aoainst these compurgations, by means of which a debtor with a dozen ruffians could swear an honest man out of bis goods. Even when witnesses were examined, no rebutting evidence was called, nor was their testimony submitted to a. jury; and the trial must still have been -unsatisfactory from mar,'y points of view, especially when witnessing became a trade. By the middle of the following century complaint was that witnesses were perjured to the great sjlander of the city, and that they were so primed, selected, and bribed that it was impossible to get, at- the truth."' We have certainly improved since those good old days.