Report of the Annual Session of the Georgia Bar Association Volume 14 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1897 Excerpt: ... or pilfering a pewter pot. Such lawmakers were ignorant as they were cruel." Thus says Sir Thomas Erskine May, Constitutional History of England, Volume 2, pages 553 and 554. In 1819, Sir James Mcintosh, moving in Parliament for a committee to inquire into the conditions of the criminal law, said that there were no less than two hundred capital felonies on the statutes. Sir James Stephen says, after making all deductions, "that there can be no doubt that the legislation of the eighteenth century in criminal matters was severe to the highest degree and devoid of any sort of principle or system." In addition to this vast number of capital offenses, the crown had every advantage in the prosecution. "It seems universally agreed," says Ohitty, "that at common law, a prisoner was not entitled to defend by counsel upoD the general issue of not guilty, on any indictment for treason or felony." He says further, "This rule will appear somWhat strict and severe, as the Crown has always the benefit of counsel to marshal its evidence and state the case to the jury, but it is in some degree attempted to be explained by the fact that the judge is to be counsel for the prisoner, whose duty it is to see that all the proceedings are regular, to examine witnesses for the defendant, to advise him for his benefit, but hear his defense with patience and, in general, to take care that he is neither irregularly nor unjustly convicted." On issues of law, if the defendant himself proposed the point, counsel might be assigned him to argue it, or to plead a pardon, or to assign errors to reverse an outlawry and certain other collateral issues. i With reference to treason, the law as to counsel was changed by the Statute of 7 William III. T...