W E have hitherto refrained from commenting on this case because
we believe that newspaper agitations on such questions are apt to do a great deal more harm than good. When a case becomes the shuttlecock of journalists many wild charges are made, and the true points at issue tend to be obscured. We desire to look at the matter dispassionately, believing, as we do, that in the main our criminal law works justly, but that now and then mistakes occur which deserve full publicity and censure. The facts are simple, and not in dispute. In 1877 one John Smith was tried on the charge of defrauding a number of women of the " unfortunate " class by borrowing their jewellery and giving bogus cheques, passing him- self off as a certain " Lord Willoughby." He was arrested by a policeman called Spurrell, and the prose- cuting counsel was the present Common Serjeant, then Mr. Forrest Fulton. Smith received five years' penal servitude, the maximum sentence, and disappears tem- porarily from the story. Nineteen years later, in 1896, Mr. Beck was arrested on precisely the same charge,—the same kind of frauds, the same class of women, the same devices, and almost the same title, " Lord Wilton de Willoughby." A large number of women swore to his identity as the man who robbed them, and the police- man Spurrell gave evidence to the same effect, swearing in addition that this was the John Smith whom he had arrested in 1877. Identification is a notoriously risky business, and we have known mistakes made in perfect good faith ; but there can be no doubt, as several recent cases have shown, that the police are often very casual in their use of it. The trial took place before Sir Forrest Fulton; and of the two indictments, one was for larceny, and alleged that the prisoner had been condemned as Smith in 1877. It is provided by statute that such a count cannot be tried till after the jury have decided upon the main charge. It was perhaps open to the Judge, if he remembered the case in which he had prose- cuted nineteen years before, to stretch the practice, and allow the question of the prisoner's identity with Smith to be tried with the main issue. But a busy lawyer may well have forgotten the case after so many years, and Sir Forrest Fulton only followed. the well-known rule of English law in refusing to allow any examination of the antecedents of the accused which was not inaterial to the issue to take place prior to the decision of the jury on the case before them. There is much to be said for the rule, which, on the whole, works out quite as much in the accused's favour as against him ; but hard cases undoubtedly occur, and in cases of mis- taken identification it makes disproof very difficult, since it limits the proof of alibi to one set of incidents, when a proof in a former set might be an equally logical rebutter. At the same time, it must be remembered. that in the main indictment, on which the prisoner was condemned, a previous conviction was not alleged. Had the Criminal Evidence Act been passed in 1896, Mr. Beck could have entered the witness-box, and his counsel could have secured from him a denial of a previous conviction. If the Crown had cross-examined on the point, Mr. Beck's counter-evidence might have been put before the Court. Even as things stood, Mr. Beck's counsel could have adduced evidence of good character, which the Crown would have been obliged to disprove ; but for some reason this does not appear to have been done. What happened was that a number of women and the police swore to his guilt with perfect unanimity, and somehow, from the evi- dence of Spurrell or others, the Smith story seems to have got before the jury. On the other indictment, alleging a previous conviction, Mr. Beck had three witnesses of the highest character to prove that he was in Lima in 1880, at the time when Smith was undergoing penal servitude. But their evidence was not required, for the counsel for the Crown, being for some reason doubtful about his evidence, asked for a nolle prosegui on this indictment, and the Smith story was dropped.
1Vvw comes the difficult part of this curious tale. The Smith allegation, as we have seen, was never argued in Court, but it seems to have got before the jury in Spurrell's evidence, and it seems to have influenced the Judge in his sentence. Mr. Beck was sentenced to seven years' penal servitude, which is so heavy a sentence that it is difficult to resist this conclusion. Mr. Beck went to prison, where his clothes were marked with the letters " D. W.," which signi- fied a conviction in 1877. It is hard to believe that the prison authorities made this mistake on their own account without any direction from the Court which had con- demned him. Meanwhile the unfortunate gentleman continued in durance till he learned by chance that Smith was a Jew, and that the police had proofs of it. Whereupon the Home Office, while declining to reopen the question of guilt or innocence, admitted that he was not Smith by removing one of the letters from his clothes. This was of course all that the Department could do, for he had not been condemned for Smith's crimes ; but the Home Secretary had power to reopen the case, and it must people. But if it were ever excusable to make such an assump. seem to most people that there were already good grounds for inquiry. The coincidence in the two sets of frauds was too strange to be credible except on the hypothesis of personal identity, and some of the witnesses who swore to Mr. Beck's guilt obviously believed him to be Smith. In 1900 Mr. Beck came out of prison, and set about the melancholy task of clearing his name. Nothing happened till the present year, when the same crimes recommenced, and Mr. Beck was again arrested. He was tried and convicted, but before sentence was passed the mysterious Smith was caught at his old game. The information dis- closed was such as to secure the immediate release of Mr. Beck and his complete rehabilitation. But the mistakes of the Home Office were not ended. They offered him £2,000 as a solatium on the condition that he let the question drop. It is, of course, ridiculous to represent this as " hush-money " ; it is the ordinary form, " in full settlement of all claims." But Mr. Beck very properly refused such an impossible condition, and he and his friends have demanded a full investigation. It is a rare thing for compensation to be paid for a miscarriage of justice, and as a matter of principle we do not consider the sum grossly inadequate. To compensate for such a cruel mistake is impossible, and a money payment is rather the seal to an apology than an assessed valuation of wrongs. But the thing has gone so far that nothing will allay popular suspicion but a searching and unprejudiced. inquiry.
We have no sympathy with the vague accusations current in certain quarters of the Press, or the deductions drawn as to the inefficiency of our criminal law. All things considered, our criminal law works admirably, and the presence of a few black or foolish sheep in the police should not blind us to the merits of that force. After all, if Mr. Beck owes his misfortunes to the police, he also owes his rehabilitation largely to the energy and intelli- gence of Inspector Kane. But an ample primed faciecase has been made out for inquiry. A cruel wrong has been done to an innocent man, and it is our business to see that steps are taken to prevent the recurrence of such an injustice. The points on which we want in- formation may be briefly enumerated. First, how was the evidence of Spurrell and the women prepared in the trial of 1896 ? It may have been a bona'-ficle case of mis- take, but it has an unpleasant look. Secondly, how did it happen that the presumed identity with Smith, although not argued in Court, apparently got before the jury, influenced the Common Serjeant in his sentence, and dictated the action of the prison authorities ? There may be a perfectly simple explanation ; but we have a right to ask for it. Lastly, what were the reasons for the general conduct of the Home Office throughout in refusing to reopen the case after the Smith story was disproved ? There may be insufficient machinery in existence to provide for a speedy rehearing of a case when fresh evidence is obtained ; but if this be so, a reform is obviously needed. The kind of inquiry which seems to us most suitable would be a small Commission under the presidency of some well- known authority on the criminal law. It should not be a Com- mittee wholly of lawyers or of officials, and such lawyers as it may contain should be those who are no longer advocates. The worst form of inquiry would be by a House of Commons Committee, the majority of whose members would be ignorant of the nature of the criminal law or the rules of evidence, and would be inclined to introduce ruinous innovations to meet a particular hard case. At the same time, we would deprecate the wild talk about an " English Dreyfus case " which some have indulged in. Mr. Beck's case is like that of Captain Dreyfus, inasmuch as he is of foreign blood, and his chief champion is a journalist, Mr. G. It. Sims having fought the cause of his friend with the most praiseworthy persistence and courage. But the great feature of the Dreyfus case'was the refusal of the Govern- ment to do justice, and this we are confident there in little reason to fear.
THE NEW EPICUREANISM.
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