PRIDE AND PREJUDICE

Waipa Post, Volume 32, Issue 1780, 8 July 1926, Page 6

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE

Denmark, we are told,', is contemplating a law to restrain judges from perpetrating "tactless witticisms" and observations which might prejudice the interests of persons on trial, states a correspondent in the Manchester Guardian. It sounds rather a blow to the dignity of the Danish bench. But if Denmark can restrain the legal machinery from prejudicing in effect the issues which it exists to try more will have been accomplished than has ever been attempted in this country. It is extraordinary how illogical our system of protecting the accused can be in practice. The one unpardonable sin in a newspaper is' to add anything of its own, even in the headline, which might be held to suggest a possible member of a jury than an accused person was guilty. But all prisoners appear first before a magistrate, Avho must to some extent indicate his own idea of their guilt by committing them for trial, andj if the prisoner happens to be accused of murder probably a coroner's jury finds him guilty of it long before he reaches the high court. The odd thing is tthat all this is supposed to have no effect on the minds of the high court jury, whereas a single slip in a newspaper headline can be held fatally to prejudice their otherwise impartial minds.

Where no jury is involved it is fortunately held less easy for a newspaper to prejudice the issue, for a judge or magistrate sitting alone is not supposed to be easily moved as the simple juror. But if anything could influence a judge, presumably it would be the remarks of one of his colleagues. Yet we have had an example of a judge recommending that a particudar hearing should be taken before another judge, because he himself "knew the parties and thought it was a bad case. . . If he heard the application he should probably say something that he might) be sorry for.'" Something with boiling oil about it would have been the appropriate fate for a journalist who had achieved anything approaching that elegant indiscretion.