Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 2, 2025
Gourlay informs his readers, were "caught hold of" as the twelve which should decide his fate. The names of the jurors, which, so far as I am aware, have not hitherto appeared in print, are worthy of preservation. They were William Pew, John Grier, William Servos, James B. Jones, Ralfe M. Long, David Bastedo, John C. Ball, John Milton, James Lundy, William Powers, Peter M. Ball and John Holmes.
Swiss jurors are elected by the people and hold office six years. In French and German Switzerland, there is one such juror for every thousand inhabitants, and in Italian Switzerland one for every five hundred. To a Swiss it would seem as odd to select jurors haphazard as to so select judges. In most of the manufacturing cantons, councils of prud'hommes are elected by the people.
The following statute was passed by Edward I., seventy years after Magna Carta: "Forasmuch also as sheriffs, hundreders, and bailiffs of liberties, have used to grieve those which be placed under them, putting in assizes and juries men diseased and decrepit, and having continual or sudden disease; and men also that dwelled not in the country at the time of the summons; and summon also an unreasonable number of jurors, for to extort money from some of them, for letting them go in peace, and so the assizes and juries pass many times by poor men, and the rich abide at home by reason of their bribes; it is ordained that from henceforth in one assize no more shall be summoned than four and twenty; and old men above three score and ten years, being continually sick, or being diseased at the time of the summons, or not dwelling in that country, shall not be put in juries of petit assizes."
Soon after midday, the last of the cases was finished, and having signified a True Bill for nearly the hundredth time, the jurors were conducted into the Court where a prisoner was standing in the dock for his real trial. As though they had saved a tottering State, the Judge thanked them graciously for their services, and they were discharged.
Each district was governed by a Governor, elected for two years, and a Court of Judges, consisting of a Chief Justice, a Prosecuting Attorney, an Attorney for the Defense and twelve Justice Jurors, who tried all felony cases and civil cases that could not be settled by Arbitration, and who sat also as a Board of Equalization and as Supervisors.
Shouting and huzzahing, the mob escorted the new Whitsun King along all the streets of the town, for he was in duty bound to stop before the houses of the chief magistrate and town councillors, and there drink their healths in a good bumper, which admirable custom goes to prove that the Whitsun King had need to be not merely a good runner, but a good drinker too; and this latter quality was all the more necessary, owing to the circumstance that, when he had done with the rest of them, he had, last of all, to go up to John Kárpáthy's castle in the company of all the sworn jurors, and drink again there.
I am thus particular in recording the names of these jurors, before I relate the indictment which was found by them, because, if that indictment was unjust, it stamps their memory with eternal infamy; and with the judges, the commissioners, the privy council, the king, with every living person who was a party, active or passive, to so enormous a calumny, they must be remembered with shame for ever.
It consisted in the mandarin-like clerk taking the names of all the jurors called to serve in this court for the month some fifty in all and putting them, each written on a separate slip of paper, in a whirling drum, spinning it around a few times, and then lifting out the first slip which his hand encountered, thus glorifying chance and settling on who should be juror No. 1.
The treasurer said, 'I'm sorry, but they aint any funds left for the jurors' fees. "'Can't you give me some out of some other fund? "'No, that won't do can't do that. "'Well, when will yeh have some money in? "'Well, it's hard tellin' in two or three months, probably. "'Well, I'd like the money on this order. I need it. Can't I git somebody to cash it for me? "'Well, I dunno.
There, on seats behind the throne, sat the twenty-one jurors, Earl Douglas among them a new earl, for the grim old Archibald had died in the battle of Verneuil some months before.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking