Criminal justice

"A conviction must be good in all its parts; the information must be supported by the evidence, and the judgment must be supported by both."

"You shall have the laws of England, although you refuse to own them in not holding up your hand; for the holding up of the hand hath been used as a part of the law of England these five hundred years."

"The law is plain, that you are positively to answer, guilty, or not guilty, which you please."

"He that doth refuse to put himself upon his legal trial of God and the Country, is a mute in law; and therefore you must plead guilty or not guilty. Let his language be what it will, he is a mute in law."

"Truly I think it one of the most reasonable laws in the world, that a man be tried by his county, by the neighbourhood ; and it has given ground to a good English proverb: "He that has an ill-name, is half hanged."* A man's repute among his neighbours goes a great way in this matter, when his neighbours shall say they never knew ill by him."

"Nothing could be of worse consequence, than that an officer of the Court should combine with a criminal to frustrate the sentence of the Court."

"He that hath an ill name is half hang'd ye know."

"Judges should be, and I believe generally are, careful not to allow proof of other acts of the prisoner besides those the subject of the indictment to be given, unless those acts have a clear bearing on some issue raised by the indictment."

"We must follow the old authorities and precedents in criminal matters."

"There are certain irregularities which are not the subject of criminal law. But when the criminal law happens to be auxiliary to the law of morality, I do not feel any inclination to explain it away."

"Really I wish I was more acquainted than I am, with the course of criminal jurisdiction—if the question had never been decided, I should have extreme doubts upon it, and those extreme doubts which I should have would lead me in a criminal case to do otherwise than I should do in a civil case—in every civil case [I speak in the hearing of a great many professional gentlemen] wherever I have serious doubts, I follow the doctrine which I have collected to be laid down by Lord Hardwicke; I receive the evidence, giving the jury the best instruction I can upon the effect of it; and I do it in the case of civil proceedings, without running the risk of doing any hurt, because if I receive it improperly, a season will come when the Court can correct my error."

"A conviction is in the nature of a verdict and judgment, and therefore it must be precise and certain."

"I take it that the judgment is an essential point in every conviction, let the punishment be fixed or not."

"The natural leaning of our minds is in favour of prisoners; and in the mild manner in which the laws of this country are executed, it has rather been a subject of complaint by some that the Judges have given way too easily to mere formal objections2 on behalf of prisoners, and have been too ready on slight grounds to make favourable representations of their cases. Lord Hale himself, one of the greatest and best men who ever sat in judgment, considered this extreme facility as a great blemish, owing to which more offenders escaped than by the manifestation of their innocence." We must, however, take care not to carry this disposition too far, lest we loosen the bands of society, which is kept together by the hope of reward, and the fear of punishment. It has been always considered, that the Judges in our foreign possessions abroad were not bound by the rules of proceeding in our Courts here. Their laws are often altogether distinct from our own. Such is the case in India and other places. On appeals to the Privy Council from our colonies, no formal objections are attended to, if the substance of the matter or the corpus delicti sufficiently appear to enable them to get at the truth and justice of the case."

"Justice requires that a party should be duly summoned and fully heard before he is condemned."

"I once before had occasion to refer to the opinion of a most eminent Judge, who was a great Crown lawyer, upon the subject, I mean Lord Hale; who even in his time lamented the too great strictness which had been required in indictments, and which had grown to be a blemish and inconvenience in the law; and observed that more offenders escaped by the over easy ear given to exceptions in indictments than by their own innocence."

"There is no difference between civil and criminal cases as to evidence; whatever is proper evidence in one case is in the other. With respect to criminal cases, if there is any doubt, one would lean in favour of a defendant, for the reason mentioned by my lord yesterday, because that is not to be set right afterwards."

"It is the pride of our laws to labour more for the acquittal than the conviction of the accused, however black the allegations of offence."

"God forbid that the defendant should not be allowed the benefit of every advantage he is entitled to by law."

"In a criminal case I can presume nothing."

"In criminal cases you always begin by proving the corpus delicti, and then connect the prisoner with it."

"It is abominable to convict a man behind his back."

"The laws of God and man both give the party an opportunity to make his defence, if he has any. I remember to have heard it observed by a very learned man upon such an occasion, that even God himself did not pass sentence upon Adam before he was called upon to make his defence. Adam (says God), where art thou? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? And the same question was put to Eve also."

"Without resorting to authorities in a plain case, the common sense and feeling of mankind, the voice of nature, reason, and revelation, all concur in this plain rule, That no man is to be condemned unheard; and consequently no trial ought to proceed to the condemnation of a man who by the providence of God is rendered totally incapable of speaking for himself, or of instructing others to speak for him."

"I take it to be contrary to the first principles of English jurisprudence and English law that a man should be condemned unheard."

"It is necessary to the administration of justice that every person who is accused of a crime should have an opportunity of being heard in his defence against the charge of which he is accused."

"It is of the essence of justice not to decide against any one on grounds which are not charged against him, and as to which he has not had an opportunity of offering explanations or calling evidence."

"It is certain that natural justice requires that no man shall be condemned without notice."

"There must be an opportunity given to every person before judgment is passed upon him of being heard in his defence, and it is essential that the charge should always be intimated to the supposed delinquent."

"Every man ought to have the fullest opportunity of establishing his innocence if he can."

"Would to God you were innocent, that is the worst wish I wish you."

"The word " innocent" hath a double acceptation, innocent in respect of malice, and innocent in respect of the fact."

"God forbid that the rights of the innocent should be lost and destroyed by the offence of individuals."

"As anger does not become a Judge, so neither doth pity; for one is the mark of a foolish woman, as the other is of a passionate man."

"If his sorrow was honest and sincere it may go very far in mitigation."

"It is an invariable maxim in our law that no man shall be punished before he has had an opportunity of being heard."

"This Court will always know to temper mercy with justice where there is room for it."

"We sit here in this Court of Queen's Bench under the same obligation as the Queen holds her Crown, to administer justice with mercy according to the laws of the land."

"In all cases whatever it is usual for either plaintiff or defendant to speak by their counsel. You are assisted by a most able counsel, and you would not be guilty of any impropriety if what you wish to offer to the Court were first suggested to him, for he would then determine of the propriety of suggesting it to the Court."

"You have a right to discourse with your counsel, but you must do it in such a manner as the jury may not hear."

"Wise and practical regulations must contemplate and provide for the occasional oversights and inadvertences which, by the law of chances, are certain to happen among the thousands of criminal trials before all sorts of jurisdictions every year in England."

"I agree with Mr. Pitt Taylor that, in many of the cases, justice and common sense have been sacrificed,8 but not, as it appears to me, at the shrine of mercy—rather at the shrine of guilt, because I regard a wrongful acquittal as unmerciful to the prisoner, whose real interests are sacrificed by his escape, as well as to society."

"Every human tribunal ought to take care to administer justice, as we look hereafter to have justice administered to ourselves."

"You will understand one thing, and that is, that having been acquitted, you have no right to address one word either to the Court or the jury. At the same time, I do not wish to hold you strictly to that right ; but conduct yourself properly, and I will not stop you."

"We cannot hear the client and counsel too, it is against all rules."

"Justice and common sense seem to have been sacrificed on the shrine of mercy."

"The law of England is anxious for the interests of persons against whom charges may be made. If a man commits a crime, there is a legal and constitutional mode by which that crime may be brought into discussion. He is liable to be tried, but though his crime may be as great and as aggravated as possible, he ought to have a full, fair, dispassionate, and temperate investigation of his conduct at the time of trial."

"It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer."

"Minatur innocentibus, qui pareit nocentibus: He threatens the innocent who spares the guilty."

"I am of the same opinion with the Roman who, in the case of Catiline, declared he had rather ten guilty persons should escape than one innocent should suffer."