48
a door to fraud, less reliable by reason of its
being second-hand, and would tend to protract legal
inquiries and to encourage the substitution of weaker
for stronger evidence. I think, however, that if
fact
or dinary intelligent reasoning would accept a fact as
probative of the main/alleged, as it undoubtedly would
accept the evidence objected to in the present case,
some such de finite rule of legal exclusion must be found
applicable before it can be shut out. I think that
no such rule is applicable here. The mere fact that
evidence discloses another offence does not alone exclude
it. Here the evidence was not offered to show that the
accused was of a murderous disposition generally and
likely to commit another murder, and it did not in
any way tend to suggest that he was. It was offered
dimply in order to prove that he was the person who
employed Lau to procure the murder and in my opinion
it was clearly admiɛsible for that purpose.
I think that the conviction should be
affi:med.
(sd) J.H.Kemp,
Chief Justice,
12th September, 1932.