TRIAL BY [GRAND] JURY.
‟Fiat justitia ruat cœlum.”
To the EDITOR of the HAMPSHIRE TELEGRAPH.
SIR,—I have no wish to underrate the services of Grand Juries: there are, doubtless, occasional instances in which a prisoner is committed for trial on such insufficient evidence that it would be wasting the time of the Court and doing injustice to the prisoner to place him in the dock at all, and a preliminary inquiry, resulting in ‟No Bill” is in every such case manifestly a public benefit. But I am sure, Mr. Editor, you will agree with me that great caution is needed in arriving at such a decision, for as ‟No Bill” is practically tantamount to a verdict of ‟Not Guilty” it is clear that by ignoring a Bill on insufficient grounds the Grand Jury is trenching on the provinces and exercising the functions of the Petty Jury. The question for the latter is, ‟Guilty or Not Guilty?” whereas the former has only to do with the question ‟A Trial, or No Trial?” I am led to make these remarks from having seen in your paper of the 31st ult., under the head of Petersfield Petty Sessions, a case of larceny sent by the Magistrates for trial at the Quarter Sessions, on which, as appears from the Telegraph of the 7th inst., the Grand Jury found ‟No, Bill.” I think it is due alike to the committing Magistrates, and to the interests of justice abstractedly considered, that the public should know on what ground such a decision was arrived at. The facts sworn to before the Bench were substantially as follows—Two young men, Denyer and Phillips, farm labourers, lodge in the same house and sleep in the same bed, Denyer misses from a purse in his trowsers pocket a sovereign and two half-sovereigns; he questions Phillips about it, and Phillips at first denies all knowledge of the matter, but afterwards produces a half-sovereign and says he found it on the bed, and hid it under the bed-post, it is further proved that on the day previous to the money being missed, Phillips had purchased a watch, which he paid for with a sovereign and a half-sovereign. Then comes the question had he any visible means of becoming possessed of such a sum? his employer deposes that his wages were 6s. a week, out of the house, that he paid him every week, and that he never paid him any gold. Now I do not mean to affirm that a conviction would necessarily have ensued upon the foregoing evidence, but I do venture to say that there was primâ facie a case for inquiry, and that the Grand Jury, by interposing their veto, obstructed the course of justice.
A LOOKER ON.
(See also 31-Dec-1859)