The Sun.
London, England, 1867-10-08 00:00:00

The Handcuffing of Prisoners on Trial.

Our contemporaries differ widely in their com-
ments upon the conduct of Mr. Fowler in refusing
to have the handcuffs removed from the hands of
the Fenian priSoners arraigned before him and his
brother magistrates, and this topic involves another
upon which there is a similar discrepancy of con-
clusion.—the conduct of a member of the bar, Mr.
Ernest Jones, in throwing up his brief on this occa-
sion. The questions involved do not appear to us to
present much difficulty. It is admittedly unusual,
and, in fact, wrong, for prisoners to be ironed or
manacled while before a judge or magistrate, and in
" Griffin v. Coleman," 4 11. and N. 265, and also
in " Wright v. Court," 4 B. and C. 596 it was ruled,
that if a constable orders an unconvicted prisoner to
be handcuffed when there is no attempt to escape,
or reasonable ground to fear a rescue, the constable
will be responsible in damages for an assault. This
is only a reiteration of Sir Matthew Hale's expres-
sion (2 H. P. C. 219) that " a prisoner ought to be
brought to the bar without irons, shackles, or bonds,
except there be danger of a rescue or escape." There
is no need of authority upon such a point as this.
Common justice requires that prisoners, while on
their trial, shall, so far as practicable, be subjected
to no unnecessary degradation, or inconvenient and
annoying constraint. There was, indeed, an excep-
tion once made to this rule in the practice of for-
mer days which required the prisoner on trial for a
capital offence to stand at the bar in irons, but
modern humanity has long since abolished that
usage. While, however, prisoners are entitled to
this immunity, there is yet another and a paramount
consideration, that of insuring their detention. Sir
Matthew Hale, in the passage above cited, excepts
cases in which escape or rescue is apprehended.
The question, therefore, in the Manchester case,
is whether the magistrate had reasonable appre-
hensions of this kind sufficient to justify
him in refusing to order the prisoners' fetters
to be removed. Now, there is a wide distinc-
tion between applying to the police for in-
formation on this head, and submitting (as it has
been said) to their dictation, and it appears to us
that it was not only perfectly natural but the proper
course under the circumstances for Mr. Fowler to
apply to the head of the police, Captain Palin, and
to ask whether or no in his opinion the state of the
neighbourhood and of popular feeling, and the con-
duct of the prisoners, did or did not raise any
apprehensions sufficient to warrant their being kept
handcuffed. It does not appear that the magistrate
did more than this, and this was a question upon
which, sitting there to hear the charge against these
prisoners, he had very little information, while
Captain Palin might be supposed to possess every
means of forming a correct opinion. Mr. Fowler
then, having applied to the proper quarter for in-
formation, and having been advised that under the
circumstances the prisoners had better be kept
handcuffed, acted on that advice--at least this is
how the public reports of the proceedings represent
the matter—and we can see nothing reprehensible
in this conduct. If any one has injured the pri-
soners, it is Mr. Jones, who, after commiserating
their unhappy condition, proceeded to add to their
misfortunes the loss of their counsel. There are,
undoubtedly, occasions upon which it is the duty of
a barrister to throw up his brief. It has been done,
with the approbation of the court, upon the counsel
discovering it grossly misrepresented the cause he
had been engaged to advocate. We need not dis-
cuss other grounds for so doing, but it is plai❑ that
the reasons should be very strong indeed to induce
a counsel to retire from a case, when his doing so
will leave undefended a prisoner who has expressed
a great desire for his services. We have already
said that Mr. Fowler's conduct appears to us to have
been quite justifiable, but had this been otherwise,
and had the magistrate allowed himself obviously
to be dictated to by the police (of which conduct
we believe no barrister sitting as a magistrate would
be guilty), we think that Mr. Ernest Jones' honour
as a barrister (and certainly the interest of the pri-
soners) would have been best consulted by his con-
tinuing, after proper protest, to afford the prisoners
the benefit of his advocacy. His conduct appears
to us to savour rather of an ostentatious and undig-
nified petulance.

We may add that, so far from displaying any
undue harshness towards the accused, the bench
were willing to afford them assistance towards
bringing their cases within the provisions of the
new Criminal Law Amendment Act (30 and 31
Vict. c. 35), which came into force last Tuesday, in
the matter of witnesses' expenses.—Solicitors'
Journal.

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