Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 13.pdf/391

This page needs to be proofread.
356
The Green Bag.

attained equal eminence as a judge, it may be asserted that no lawyer of the century combined in such an eminent degree the logical and imaginative qualities of mind. In Cockburn's mental equipment imag inative qualities certainly predominated. His mind was perhaps too quick and susceptible to admit of the tenacity of grasp essential to the highest excellence in the formal exposition of legal doctrines. But at яш pritis, in dealing with facts, he achieved enviable distinction. His most con spicuous effort in this sphere was his charge to the jury in the memorable Tichborne case, in the course of which he formulated with eloquence and force the true relations be tween courts and juries. "In my opinion," he said, "a judge does not discharge his duty who contents himself with being a mere re cipient of evidence, which he is afterwards to reproduce to the jury without pointing out the facts and inferences to which they natur ally and legitimately give rise. It is the busi ness of the judge so to adjust the scales of the balance that they shall hang evenly. But it is his duty to see that the facts as they arise are placed in the one scale or the other according as they belong to one or the other. It is his business to take care that the infer ences which properly arise from the facts are submitted to the consideration of the jury, with the happy consciousness that if we go wrong there is the judgment of twelve men having experience in the every day con cerns of life to set right anything in respect of which he may have erred. ... In the conviction of the innocent, and also in the escape of the guilty, lies, as the old say ing is, the condemnation of the judge." With respect to the question of reasonable doubt he said : "You have been asked, gentlemen, to give the defendant the benefit of any doubts you may entertain. Most assuredly it is your duty to do so. It is the business of the prosecution to bring home guilt to the ac cused to the satisfaction of the jury. But the doubt of which the accused is entitled to

the benefit must be the doubt that a rational, that a sensible man may fairly entertain, not the doubt of a vacillating mind that has not the moral courage to decide, but shelters it self in a vain and idle scepticism. ... I should be the last man to suggest to any' individual member of the jury that if he entertains conscientious, fixed convictions, although he may stand alone against his eleven fellow jurors, he should give up the profound and unalterable convictions of his own mind. . ' . . But then we must recollect that he has a duty to perform, and that it is this. He is bound to give the case every possible consideration before he final ly determines upon the course he will pur sue, and if a man finds himself differing from the rest of his fellows with whom he is associated in the great and solemn function of the administration of justice, he should start with the fair presumption that the one individual is more likely to be wrong than the eleven from whom he differs. He should bear in mind that the great purpose of trial by jury is to obtain unanimity and put an end to further litigation; he should address himself, and in all diffidence in his own judgment, to the task he has to per form, and carefully consider all the reasons and arguments which the rest of the body are able to put forward for the judgment they are ready to pronounce, and he should let no self-conceit, no notion of being su perior to the rest in intelligence, no vain presumption of superiority on his part, stand in the way. . . . That is the duty which the juryman owes to the administra tion of justice and the opinion of his fel lows, and therefore I must protest against the attempt to encourage a single juryman, or one or two among a body of twelve, to stand out resolutely, positively, and with fixed determination and purpose, against the judgment and opinion of the majority. With respect to the argument that public opinion was with the accused, he said: "There is but one course to follow in the discharge of great public duties. No man