The Press.
London, England, 1856-05-24 00:00:00

THE DEFENCE.

It

Mr. Sergeant SHEE then rose to open the defence.
Acknowledging the vast responsibility resting upon
him, he admitted that everything had been done by
the Crown to insure a fair and impartial trial. The
prosecution was taken out of private bands, the
ordinary forms of law were broken through to pre-
vent the influences of local prejudice, and every tittle
of evidence intended to be pressed against the
prisoner had been previously communicated by the
Attorney-General to the prisoner's counsel. All this
was a source tf encouragement in undertaking the
defence, wuich he had commenced with an unbiassed
mind, but in conducting which he was further
stimulated, after a careful perusal of all the evidence,
by the most thorough and sincere conviction of the
prisoner's innocence. In dealing with the case he
would avoid no single point that had been raised, he
would meet the case for the prosecution foot by foot,
and grapple with every difficulty suggested by the
Attorney-General. The prolcosition which the Crown
undertook to establish against the prisoner at the
bar, and to support entirely by circumstantial evi-
dence, was this--i.hat the prisoner having, in the
second week of November, made up his mind that it
would be to his interest to get rid of John Parsons
Cook, deliberately prepared his body for deadly
poison by the slower poison of antimony, and after-
wards despatched him by the deadly poison
strychnia. Now, no jury would convict a man of
such a crime as that imputed to the prisoner unless,
in the first place, it be made clear that he had some
motive for its commission, some strong reason for
planning that man's death ; in the second place,
that the symptoms of the deceased before death and
the appearances presented by the body afterwards
were consistent with the thecry of poisoning and in-
consistent with the thsory of death from other and
natural causes; or, thirdly, that the circumstances
against him were such as to admit no doubt of the fact.
Now, it was under these three heads that he would
discuss the evidence in the case; and if he adhered
to that order it was clear that he must exhaust the
whole subject. But before he proceeded to these
points he would wish to restore to its proper place
11 the discussion the fact that strychnine was not
f mud in Cook's body. Never were circumstances more
worable for the detection of strychnine, had any ex-
,ted in the body. But none was found. Dr. Tay-
-IWs written opinion was that Cook might have
1):en poisoned by antimony as discovered, but that
n) strychnine was detected in the analysis. The
a sertion that strychnine when once absorbed into
t'te system was not discoverable, was a mere hypo-
thesis, and one unsupported by any authority of
consequence. On the contrary, he would bring for
ward Dr. Nnnneley, Dr. Williams, Dr. Letheby,
Dr. Parker, Dr. Robinson, Mr. Rogers, and Mr.
Herepath, the most eminent analytical chemists
a2d scientific men of the day, as utterly rejecting
-does, and all agreeing
of the body could so far
t or less of a grain of
as to prevent it; respond-
being discovered. Now,
to Palmer for the de-

tet4 theory of Dr. Tayl
that no stage of putrefaction
decompose une•fiftieth part
strychnine, if once taken, a
ing to chymical tests, and
ithilimmas to the motive attributed