12
climax in a passage where he said :
"Is it not essential the he should go into the
witness-box and tell you that himself and bo subject to cross-examination about it ? he did not do so and there it is."
Well,
It
It was at this point that he was said Ly the Court of Appeal to have
overstepped the limits of justifiable comment and that he should not
have said what he did. It should be nosed however notwithstanding
this fact the Court refused to interfe: with the conviction.
need only be added that nowhere in the passages in the summing- up
to which counsel has drawn our attention, and which appear between pages 520 and 523 of the record, did the learned Chief Justice in the
present case go anything like so far. The terms in which the learned Chief Justice commented on the failure of the appellant to give evidence
though strong were in the view of this court fully justified by the
circumstances of the case.
The foregoing grounds which have been discussed are all
subsumed in the final ground ground seren, in which it is said that
the verdict of the jury in finding the appellant guilty of murder was unsafe and unsatisfactory. For the resens given we find nothing
of substance in those individual grounds.
There remains however one gr. ind of appeal (ground No. 1)
which, in our view, is the only ground to raise a matter of substance. The complaint here is that since the learned Chief Justice did not
explicitly define the elements of the charge of murder the jury were
left without instruction on a matter o: primary importance to their
decision in that they were not warned i at they should not convict
unless they were satisfied, not only
who had killed the deceased, but also
voluntary, unlawful, and with intent to harm. Counsel for the defence at the conclusion of the summing-up had
asked the learned Chief Justice to sup; ly this deficiency by a
at the appellant was the person
at the act of killing was cause death or grievous bodily
definition given in the usual terms but to this invitation the learned Chief Justice, addressing the jury, replied as follows :
"I don't propose to insult your intelligence by giving you a definition of murder. Here's a girl who was found 1yi g on the floor; whose death was caused by mar al strangulation. She had two knives plunged in her throat, two other blood-stained knives 1ing beside her. If
:
?