So wide are the powers of an examining magistrate, that he may if he wishes arrest not only presumable accomplices but any unwilling witness. It has happened before now that a witness has preferred to remain away from the room of a French examining magistrate and has been sent for by him and brought under arrest to him to give evidence, and a witness who has signed an untrue statement in the examining magistrate’s office is not unfrequently, when convicted of perjury at the trial, where he has repeated this evidence on oath, arrested in court. It sometimes happens, too, that witnesses contradict in court the evidence which they have given to the examining magistrate. If they do so they enjoy impunity, unless, they are proved to commit perjury in their contradiction, for evidence to a _juge d’instruction_ is not given on oath. It happens very frequently too, in fact it almost always happens, that numbers of people for whom the examining magistrate has never thought of sending write to him that they have evidence to give, and desire to be heard. The prisoner and the prisoner’s lawyer, even the prisoner’s friends, are encouraged also to give the names of any people from whom they wish the examining magistrate to collect evidence. Practically therefore in a French criminal case the criminal is tried twice over, once by the examining magistrate, and a second time in the court of assizes before a jury. And the first trial is the more important of the two, because of the influence of the examining magistrate’s report on the minds of the judge and of the jury, at the assize court trial. The examining magistrate has the right to acquit a prisoner without sending him or her for trial at all if he finds that there is no case. It happens, however, comparatively rarely in practice, that a _non-lieu_, as it is called, is pronounced by the examining magistrate, as it is a very bad mark against the name of any _juge d’instruction_ to allow a prisoner to be set at liberty without very conclusive proof of innocence. If there be the slightest doubt the prisoner is always sent for trial. The benefit of the doubt is practically non-existent in the conduct of a French criminal case in its preliminary stages, and it may be taken as a fact that whereas a prisoner in England is considered to be innocent until guilt has been proved, the reverse is the French method, and a prisoner in France is considered to be guilty until conclusive proof of innocence has been given and accepted.