There is no grosser or more needless injustice in our
criminal system than the long preliminary imprisonments to which untried persons, and very often persons who ought never even to have been committed for trial, are subjected, without the smallest compensa- tion. There is a remarkable instance of this in a case tried before Mr. Justice Keating at Kingston this week. Three men living at Englefield Green, named Jackson and two brothers Heigate, were charged with poaching and shooting a keeper in Windsor Park with intent to murder him, as long ago as the 29th November last. The Chertsey magistrates committed them for trial, and this week, accordingly, they were tried, and the evidence against them found so utterly untrustworthy that Mr. Denman, Q.C., the prosecuting counsel, withdrew from the prosecution after hearing the evidence of the keeper and the watcher. The keeper thought the men were the poachers with whom he had a struggle, but did not pretend to feel any sort of certainty. The watcher thought it was not the same men at all. Mr. Denman admitted that his " corro- borative " testimony was virtually worthless, and Mr. Justice Keating approved of his withdrawing from the prosecution. The truth was, these men should never have been committed for trial, and in any case but a game-preserving case they probably would not have been. As it is, these three men have suffered imprisonment for considerably more than a quarter of a year for no crime at all. If we can't administer quick justice, we ought at least to make it up to sufferers like these,—who are very numerous,—in some other way.
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