The Glasgow Chronicle. — 1849-09-26 (Glasgow, Strathclyde, Scotland)

FALLIBILITY OF EVIDENCE.  (From the London Examiner.)  In a recent number we raised the question whether there was a third party implicated in the murder of O'Connor, on the ground that, according to the evidence, the person who represented himself as Patrick O'Connor at the office of Messrs. Killick & Co. could not possibly have been Manning. It turns out however that it was Manning; and a remarkable and instructive lesson this is of the fallibility of direct evidence.  Basset (since dead) deposed that the person who passed himself off as Patrick O'Connor was about 45 years of age, stout and tall, five feet ten high, very full-faced, and not sallow in complexion, and that his figure bore a strong resemblance to the corpse of O'Connor. His brother clerk, Hammond, went farther, and swore positively that to the best of his belief the corpse he had seen was that of the person who sold stock underthe name of O'Connor.  in the examination at the Police Court, however, Basset at once identified Manning as the man who had called himself Patrick O'Connor. There was obviously no resemblance between the two persons; their ages, their heights, their complexions all differed A broader mistake could hardly have been made. Now let us suppose for a moment that the body of O'Connor had not been found, as might have been the case if a less vigilant and sagacious officer had been employed than the one who observed the appearances in the flags. Basset would. of course, have come forward with the evidence that a tall stout man, about forty-five years of age, and of a complexion not sallow, had transacted business at his employers, office, and given the name and address of Patrick O'Connor, on the Saturday, two days subsequent to O'Connor's disappearance from his lodgings. Hammond would have corroborated this test i mony, and th e effect would have been highly favourable to the escape of the Mannings, since it would have seemed that O'Connor's disappearance on the 9th was not to be ascribed to any foul play, as he had two days subsequently been seen transacting business; and the inference would probably have been that he had turned his stock into cash to leave the country, a sort of proceeding not very unfrequent with men of his character. But the signature of the receipt differing from that of O'Connor would, if produced and compared, have corrected this surmise, it is true; but here again suspicion would have been diverted from Manning, for Basset and Hammond would both have agreed in a description of the soi-disant Patrick O'Connor, which would have made it appear that Manning was not the man. How the pursuit of justice would have been perplexed and probably diverted by this evidence, not consciously false, but shaped to enormous presumptions. The witnesses believed the man to have been O'Connor. so they adapted the description of him to the description of O'Connor. They had made up their minds as to the identity; and their recollection, instead of correcting that impression, was twisted into accord with it. And this is no unusual occurHalf the evidence in courts of justice is shaped and - to conformity with the witnesses' assumptions, or some fanciful view of the case under investigation. memory of facts is distorted by some notion that mind afterwards, and to accordance with which don of facts is moulded. Another minor same effect has been presented in the eras- to the murder of O'Connor. A gun to be repaired at the shop of Mr. Yeo, in Cheapside. . . s'eo, imagining his customer to have been Manning, recollected that the person leaving an air-gun was in a state of agitation. A Mr. J. A. Temple writes to the times, stating that he was the person who left the gun, that it was not an air-gun, and that he was not in the least excited. Here the gun was made an air-gun in the mind of Mr. Yeo, because he fancied that his customer was Manning, and because it was supposed that Manning's instrument of murder had been an air-gun. The agitation was another appropriate fancy. Mr. Temple remarks, My astonishment is, that any person should take me for Manning—my height, size, and general appearance being quite the contrary. He WU probably about as like Manning as O'Connor in he eyes of Basset and Hammond, though height, size, and gensral appearance so widely differed. Conjecture wad CP' piCignk 407_ce admitted, mould everything to their fanci,