THE BENWELL VERDICT.
THE jury in the Benwell case have given the only verdict possible under the circumstances, that of " Wilful murder." The trial, apart from the special interest created by the prisoner's antecedents, has in many ways been a memorable one. For the first time since the tele- graph made sensational murder-cases international, the Canadian administration of justice has undergone the severe ordeal of having a crowd of reporters eager to seize on and write up any " incident,' creditable or discreditable, and occupied in throwing a daily reflec- tion of the proceedings in a provincial Court-house on to the newspaper-sheets throughout the English-speaking world. The test, however, has been undergone ; and the public realises that for dignity and impartiality, Canadian trials compare favourably with those of any country in the world except England. In the United States, the Courts show plenty of legal acumen, and as a rule do substantial justice ; but there has often been a marked want of judicial dignity and reserve in criminal cases, though we are glad to admit that there was a decided im- provement in this particular visible at the Cronin trial last autumn. On the Continent, though the proceedings are orderly enough, there is almost always a failure of strict impartiality on the part of the Judge, who seldom holds the scales of justice quite evenly. No trial at an English assizes could, however, have been conducted with a more admirable temper than that at Woodstock, in Canada. Judge, jury, and counsel, all seemed strongly possessed with a sense of the gravity and responsibility of the task before them, and they combined to make the investigation in every sense creditable to the Dominion. In no country in the world could Birchall have had a fairer trial than he obtained in Ontario.
We discussed last week the chief points in the evidence which connected Birchall with the crime. It may, how- ever, be worth while, in view of the fuller information now accessible, to show how impossible it would have been for the jury to have brought in a verdict of " Not guilty." The evidence against Birchall was no doubt circumstantial evidence, but it was nevertheless such as to leave no shadow of doubt as to his guilt. It is true no one saw him fire the fatal shots, but the prosecution were able to present a series of premisses to the jury from which no other con- clusion was possible but that Benwell perished by the hand of Birchall. The most damning of these may be classified as follows :- (1.) On February 17th, Birchall set out with Benwell to visit a farm which did not in reality exist, but which he professed to possess in the swamp where the body was found.
(2.) When the corpse was found, and a cigar-case with it marked Benwell, Birchall at first proposed to go with his travelling companion, Pelly, to view the body, but almost immediately produced a bogus telegram purporting to have been sent from Benwell from New York.
(3.) When Birchall had identified the body, he went to try and get the murdered man's baggage, and showed the luggage-check and the key, which he said he had received in a letter from London—we presume, the Canadian London—which letter, however, he failed to produce. (4.) On Birchall being searched after his arrest, a cap and pencil-case formerly in the possession of Benwell were found on him.
(5.) Birchall wrote a letter to Benwell's father asking for £500, and signed it with Benwell's name, two days after the latter's disappearance. (6.) Birchall was known to have practised the imitation of Benwell's signature. (7.) Birchall and Benwell were known to have left the station at Eastwood together, and to have entered the swamp together.
(8.) Two shots were heard by persons who happened to be in the swamp on February 17th, in the neighbourhood of the place where the body was found. (9.) Benwell was killed by wounds from two bullets.
It cannot, of course, be said that these circumstances admit of no explanation whatever which does not involve the guilt of Birchall. It would perhaps be just possible to concoct a theory which might explain them all, and, if accepted, free the prisoner from the inference of guilt. To sub- stantiate such a theory in a Court of Justice, it would have been necessary, however, to prove certain facts ; and it was here that the defence broke down,—a failure in no way attributable to any lack of skill on the part of the prisoner's counsel. The defence did nothing whatever to rebut the presumption of Birchall's criminality, except to suggest generally that Benwell and Birchall quarrelled in the swamp and parted company, and that later Benwell got into the hands of the bad characters who were supposed to haunt the swamp, and was by them murdered.
But if this was the true story, why was not some endeavour made to account for what Birchall was doing from the time when he alleges he parted company with Benwell, till his reappearance at the railway-station on his return journey to Niagara Falls ? Birchall must have been doing something during the time he was declared by the prosecution to have been walking to the scene of the murder, killing Benwell, rifling the body and walking back ; and yet no sort of explanation of how he employed himself on February 17th seems to have been vouchsafed. Again, the primd-facie explanation of the type-written letter asking for money with Benwell's signature attached, written two days after the latter's death, is that Birchall was taking advantage of the murder. To account for this act in some other way, no attempt was made by counsel except that contained in the general advice to the jury not to mix up the prisoner's pecuniary dishonesty with the graver question. No doubt the defence had a perfect right to urge this plea; but, under the circumstances, the absence of any more specific account of the above-mentioned transaction is highly suspicious. Again, the prisoner's advocate did not account for the fact that when the body was found, and was suspected to be Benwell's, Birchall produced a bogus telegram purporting to come from Benwell in New York, in order to prevent Pelly going to view the corpse. Such conduct was quite unnecessary to hide the pecuniary frauds, with which Pelly had no sort of concern, and can only be accounted for by Birchall's fear lest, if Pelly actually saw the body, his suspicions would be aroused. The fact that no sort of endeavour was made to get over this difficulty shows, again, that Birchall had no explanation of his conduct to offer which would hold water. Lastly, no serious attempt was made to account for the manner in which Birchall became possessed of the dead man's keys, luggage-check, cap, and pencil-case. Of course we may assume some shadowy and ubiquitous murderer in the background who placed these things in Birchall's pockets ; but unless we do, it is almost impossible to doubt that Birchall, for the sake of the few hundred pounds he might be able to extort from Benwell's parents, decoyed his unfortunate pupil into the swamp, and there murdered him in cold blood. The crime was indeed one of peculiar infamy, for Benwell evidently trusted his com- panion implicitly, never dreaming he was in the hands of a murderer, and one, too, of peculiar danger to the com- munity. Had Birchall remained unsuspected, he might, and probably would, have made a trade of murder, killing three or four persons a year as a profit-earning business ; and emigration to Canada would by-and-by have struck fathers of families with small capital as hampered by some unknown but persistently recurring cause of mysterious death.
Previous page
