The Evans Affair
SIR,—The article in the SPECTATOR of October 21 by Mr Ian Gilmour provokes another view which so far has not attracted much public attention: the ultimate consequence on the jury system.
Trial by jury is very much prized as the greatest safeguard of the liberties of the subject, and indeed the general consensus of legal practitioners of long experience realises only too well that it is much easier for a non-legal mind to assess the credibility of oral evidence given by a witness than for a legal mind to do so. Now, however, juries are bound to realise that careful decisions by any jury may, years after the trial, be toppled over by a Home Secretary who is not a lawyer, even if he happens to be actuated by sincere sentimentality influenced by the opinion expressed as probable by an inquiry years after the actual trial.
Trial by jury and support of the police are both essential requisites of the law of freedom and of the confidence of the individual citizen.
E. A. F. FENWICK Waren House, Waren Mill, Belford, Northumberland
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