Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine | Page 9

law officer of the crown. The cases which are prosecuted by ex officio information, are properly such enormous misdemeanours as peculiarly tend to disturb and endanger the government or to molest or affront the sovereign in the discharge of the functions of the royal office. The necessity for the existence of a power of this nature in the state, is thus set forth by that learned and illustrious judge, Sir William Blackstone. "For offences so highly dangerous, in the punishment or prevention of which a moment's delay would be fatal, the law has given to the crown the power of an immediate prosecution, without waiting for any previous application to any other tribunal: which power, thus necessary, not only to the ease and safety, but even to the very existence of the executive magistrate, was originally reserved in the great plan of the English constitution, wherein provision is wisely made for the preservation of all its parts."
The crown, therefore, in a case such as we have imagined, must first make choice between these two modes of procedure. The leniency of modern governments has of late usually resorted to the process by indictment; and the crown, waiving all the privileges which appertain to the kingly office, appears before the constituted tribunals of the land, as the redresser of the public wrongs, invested with no powers, and clothed with no authority beyond the simple rights possessed by the meanest of its subjects. We shall, for this reason, take no further notice of the ex officio information; and as treasons form a class of offences governed by laws and rules peculiar to itself, we shall also exclude this head of crime from our consideration, and confine ourselves solely to the ordinary criminal process by which offenders are brought to justice.
In, general, the first step in a criminal prosecution, is to obtain a warrant for the apprehension of the accused party. In ordinary cases, a warrant is granted by any justice of the peace upon information, on the oath of some credible witness, of facts from which it appears that a crime has been committed, and that the person against whom the warrant is sought to be obtained, is probably the guilty party, and is a document under the hand and seal of the justice, directed generally to the constable or other peace-officer, requiring him to bring the accused, either generally before any justice of the county, or only before the justice who granted it. This is the practice in ordinary cases; but in extraordinary cases, the warrant may issue from the Lord Chief Justice, or the Privy Council, the Secretaries of State, or from any justice of the Court of Queen's Bench. These latter warrants are, we believe, all tested, or dated England, and extend over the whole kingdom. So far the proceedings have been all _ex parte_, one side only has been heard, one party only has appeared, and all that has been done, is to procure or compel the appearance of the other. The warrant is delivered to the officer, who is bound to obey the command which it contains. It would seem, however, that, as was done in a recent case in Ireland, it is sufficient if the appearance of the accused be virtually secured, even without the intervention of an actual arrest.
When the delinquent appears, in consequence of this process, before the authorities, they are bound immediately to examine into the circumstances of the alleged crime; and they are to take down in writing the examinations of the witnesses offered in support of the charge. If the evidence is defective, and grave suspicion should attach to the prisoner, he may be remanded, in order that fresh evidence may be procured; or the magistrate, if the case be surrounded with doubt and difficulty, may adjourn it for a reasonable time, in order to consider his final decision. The accused must also be examined, but not upon oath; and his examination also must be taken down in writing, and may be given in evidence against him at the trial; for although the maxim of the common law is "_nemo tenebitur prodere seipsum_," the legislature, as long ago as the year 1555, directed that, in cases of felony, the examination of the prisoner should be taken; which provision has recently been extended to misdemeanours also. Care must be taken that his examination should not even appear to have been taken on oath; for in a very recent case, in which all the examinations were contained upon one sheet of paper, and under one general heading--from which they all purported to have been taken upon oath, the prisoner's admission of his guilt contained in that examination, was excluded on the trial, and the rest of the evidence being slight, he was accordingly acquitted.