• Nodehouse was certainly wrong. I have decided on the merits of the case. The Governor proposed in Council that the case against the accused be dismissed due to the evidence being "attenuated almost to vanishing point." It was the duty of the Magistrate to discharge the accused, and if he convicted him only in deference to a higher tribunal, he was guilty of a serious dereliction of his duty, especially if he was of the opinion that the explanation he forwarded reduced the significance of his decision to "an irreducible minimum."
I have no hesitation in saying that Mr. Nodehouse's opinion on the evidence was clear and unmistakable in favor of the accused. He had a duty to discharge the accused. The Magistrate was and is the sole judge of the credibility of the evidence and of the weight to be attached to it, and the accused had the right to ask his judge to deal with the merits of the case on its own merits, and according to his conscience, and not out of deference to a higher tribunal to which the case could only be deferred when the Magistrate had found a prima facie case against him.
The Magistrate should have been guided by the law and well-known principles, and by his own conscience, and not by what he appears to have conceived were the instructions or wishes of the Government. It is impossible for the Magistrate to shelter himself under the letter of 27th February last, the object of which was simply to remind him that he only required a prima facie case, and it suggested that he should confine his enquiry accordingly. It was never meant to restrict the Magistrate in any way as to what should constitute a prima facie case, and it in no way directed him.
Page 180
Page 181