Land B
MARC
OE
as to proceedings before Committing Magistrates
and sections 364 to 373 inclusive on a trial by Jury by which the Court is authorised to put to prisoners any questions "which it may think proper" given prisoner to answer or not to be.
substituted for the English Law
Or
3rdly. Ought the reform as to Evidence in Hong Kong to go further in this respect than it has in India and ought the Enactment of Ordinance No 3 of 1872 to be Law in Hong Kong?
Mr Hall Hayllar,
upon his Report of 1872 quotes General Vieira and the Criminal Law of England by Mr Irby James Stephen. The Argument goes to prove too much - to prove at page 196 the utter hopelessness of any fair Trial of ignorant prisoners. It appears in the Star, that in Chamber days prisoners were roughly questioned but that from 1688, the present practice of not questioning prisoners has grown up with the growth of national liberty.
Other Authors attribute this result to the national, probably jealousy of undue pressure on prisoners by Judges, which Mr Stephen refers to in his Essay before the Juridical Society, Vol. 4, p. 478. Mr. Stephen says at p. 478 "Jury Trial" that he proposes to modify and suggests the exclusion of several matters from the interrogatories to be put to the accused, some of which are excluded in Ordinance No 3 of 1872 and at page 201 of the Work to which Mr Hayllar refers.
Mr Stephen suggests that the Counsel, the Crown ought to interrogate the prisoner. "I would allow him to ask leading questions" and he objects to the prisoner being interrogated by the Judge. He objects to making "it the duty of the Judge to examine the prisoner" in that "it is of the first importance that the prisoner should be carefully protected against anything like intimidation by the Judge".
Page 365
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