Part 48 (2/2)

”I agree with the verdict,” said the Recorder. ”It is _a very bad case_, and a mercantile community like Saffron Walden must be protected against such depredators as you. No doubt there are degrees of guilt in your several cases, but I do not think I should be doing my duty to the public if I made any distinction in your sentences: you must all of you undergo a term of five years' penal servitude.”

Whereupon Tom Chambers was furious. Up he jumped, and said,--

”Really, sir; really--”

”Yes,” said Knox, ”really.”

”Well, then, sir, you can't do it,” said the counsel; ”you cannot give penal servitude for petty larceny. Here is the Act” (reading): ”'Unless the prisoner has been guilty of any felony before.'”

”Very well,” said the Recorder; ”you, Brown, the actual thief, and you, Jones, his accessory in the very act, not having been convicted before, I am sorry to say, cannot be sentenced to more than two years'

imprisonment with hard labour, and I reduce the sentence in your cases to that; but as to you, Robinson, yours is a very bad case. The jury have found that you were _mixed up_ in this robbery, and I find that you have been convicted of stealing apples. True, it's a good many years ago, but it brings you within the purview of the statute, and therefore your sentence of five years will stand.”

CHAPTER XLVI.

THE NEW LAW ALLOWING THE ACCUSED TO GIVE EVIDENCE--THE CASE OF DR.

WALLACE, THE LAST I TRIED ON CIRCUIT.

I should like to make an observation on the recent Act for enabling prisoners to go into the witness-box and subject themselves, after giving their evidence, to cross-examination.

It must be apparent to every one, learned and unlearned in its mysteries, that no evidence can be of its highest value, and often is of no value, until sifted by cross-examination. I was always opposed to this process as against an accused person, because I know how difficult it is under the most favourable circ.u.mstances to avoid the pitfalls which a clever and artistic cross-examiner may dig for the unwary.

It did not occur to me in that early stage of the discussion on the Bill that a really true story _cannot_ be shaken in cross-examination, and that only the _false_ must give way beneath its searching effect.

I had to learn something in advocacy; indeed, I was always learning, and the best of us may go on for ever learning, as long as this wonderful and mysterious human nature exists.

However, I am not writing philosophical essays, but relating the facts of my simple life, and I confess that the case that came before me on this occasion totally upset my quiet repose in all the comfortable traditions of the past. Human nature had something which I had not seen: it arose in this way. A doctor was accused of a terrible crime against a female patient. I need not give its details; it is sufficient to say that if the girl's statement was true penal servitude for life was not too much, for he was a villain of the very worst character. Taking the ordinary run of evidence, if I may use the word, and the ordinary mode of cross-examination, which, in the hands of unskilled pract.i.tioners, generally tends to corroborate the evidence-in-chief, the case was overwhelmingly proved, and how sad and painful it was to contemplate none can realize who do not understand anything below the surface of human existence.

I had watched the case with the anxious care that I am conscious should be exercised in all inquiries, and especially criminal inquiries, that come before one. I watched, and, let me say, _especially watched_, for any point in the evidence on which I could put a question in the prisoner's favour.

Upon that subject I never wavered throughout the whole of my career, and the testimony of the letters which I received from the most distinguished members of the criminal Bar--not to say that they are not equally distinguished in the civil--will, I am sure, bear out my little self-praise upon a small matter of infinite importance.

Everything in this case seemed to be overwhelmingly against the unhappy doctor. No one in court, except himself, _could_ believe on the evidence but that he was guilty.

I, who through my whole life had been studying evidence and the mode in which it was delivered, believed in the man's guilt, and felt that no cross-examination, however subtle and skilfully conducted, could shake it.

I felt for the man--a scholar, a scientist--as one must feel for the victim of so great a temptation. But I felt also that he was ent.i.tled, on account of all those things which aroused my sympathy, to the severest sentence, which I had already considered it would be my duty to award him.

Then, under the New Act, which I had spoken against and written against, as one long a.s.sociated with all the bearings of evidence given in the witness-box, the poor doctor stepped into that terrible trap for the untruthful.

Let me now observe that, even before he was sworn, his _manner_ made a great impression on my mind. And on this subject I would like to say that few Judges or advocates sufficiently consider it.

The greatest actor has a manner. The man who is not an actor has a manner, and if you are only sufficiently read in the human character, it cannot deceive you, however disguised it may be. A witness's evidence may deceive, but his manner is the looking-gla.s.s of his mind, sometimes of his innocence. It was so in this case.

The man was not acting, and he was not an actor.

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