Cook, John Parsons, -1855; Palmer, William, 1824-1856 -- Trials, litigation, etc.; Trials (Murder) -- England -- London
uttermost of your power the duty that it was yours to perform. If, upon
a review of this whole case, comparing the evidence upon the one side
and upon the other, and weighing it in the even scales of justice, you
can come to a conclusion of the prisoner’s innocence, or even entertain
that fair and reasonable amount of doubt of which the accused is
entitled to the benefit, in God’s name acquit him. But if, on the other
hand, all the facts and all the evidence lead your minds, with
satisfaction to yourselves, to the conclusion of the prisoner’s guilt,
then, but then only, I ask for a verdict of guilty at your hands. For
the protection of the good, and for the repression of the wicked, I ask
for that verdict, by which alone, as it seems to me, the safety of
society can be secured, and the demands, the imperious demands, of
public justice can alone be satisfied.
The Court then adjourned.
Eleventh Day, Monday, 26th May, 1856.
The Court met at ten o’clock.
Charge to the Jury.
[Sidenote: Lord Campbell]
LORD CAMPBELL--Gentlemen of the jury, we have at length arrived at that
stage of these solemn proceedings when it becomes my duty, as the chief
judge presiding in this Court, to explain to you the nature of the
charge brought against the prisoner, and those questions and
considerations upon which your verdict ought to be found. And,
gentlemen, I must begin by conjuring you to banish from your minds all
that you have heard with reference to these proceedings before entering
into that box. There is no doubt that a strong prejudice elsewhere did
prevail against the prisoner at the bar, in the county of Stafford,
where the offence for which he has now to answer is alleged to have been
committed; that prejudice was so strong that the Court of Queen’s Bench
made an order to remove the trial from that county. The prisoner, by his
counsel, expressed a wish that the trial should take place in the
Central Criminal Court. To enable that wish to be accomplished an Act
has been passed by the Legislature authorising the Court of Queen’s
Bench to direct the trial to take place in the Central Criminal Court,
where it was believed and known that the trial would be fair and
impartial. I must not only warn you, gentlemen, against being influenced
by what you may have before heard, but I must likewise warn
you--although I am sure it is an unnecessary caution, but one which it
is my duty to offer--against being improperly influenced by the evidence
that has been laid before you; because there has been evidence which
certainly implicates the prisoner in transactions of a very
discreditable nature. It appears that he had forged a great many bills
of exchange, and that he had entered into transactions not of a
reputable nature. These transactions, however, would have been excluded
from your consideration altogether had it not been necessary to bring
them forward to assist you in arriving at your verdict. By the law and
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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