Denton and Haughton Examiner, etc. — 1879-08-16 (Denton, Greater Manchester, England)

TOSSING FOR THE VERDICT. There are jurymen "close-buttoned to the chin" who can keep things quiet, and there are others,afflioted with garrulity who  delight in telling tales out of school. To this last class must have belonged one at least of the jurymen who were empannelled  in connection with the trial for murder or Gerald Maiuwarning at the Derby Assizes. The unfortunate young man, who is tFe son  of a county magistrate, was found guilty of murdering a policeman, whom he shot in a fit of diuuken frenzy, and he was accordingly sentenced to death. Locally' the case excited much interest and sympathy, us the family to which the condemned man belongs is well known and highly respected and the opinion was very general that a verdict of manslaughter, avoiding the death penalty, would have satisfied the ends of justice, as the shooting of the policeman was not a premeditated or deliberate act, but a rash aot done in a wild moment of driuk-madness. While the case was thus absording attention, and steps were beiug taken to petition the Home Secretary for a commutation of sentence, an extraordinary rumour found its way into the newspapers that the jury had absolutely tossed for  their verdict. This rumour appears to have caught the ear or eye of Mr Cross, who wrote for infanfation on the subject, and elecited from the foreman of the jury a statement which showed that there was some good foundation for a report that seemed so incredible. The foreman affected to be indignant at the accounts of the transaction which had appeared in print, denying that any tossing as alleged had ever taken place; but he admitted that there was balloting for a chairman upon the jury being equally divided, six for manslaughter and six for wilful murder, and that the latter verdict was accordingly settled by a casting vote. The Home Secretary, when he communicated the substance of the letter to the House of Commons, declared that he could see very little difference be. tween the account of the affair as given by the foreman and the rumour about tossing for a verdict which had got into the newspapers. After this disclosure it would be a public scandal to lead Mainwaring forth to execution, and there can be little doubt that his sentence will be commuted, as indeed Mr Cross virtually indicated by the remark he made when Mr Callan gave notice of a question on the subject. It is scarcely possible to conceive anything more reprehensible than the conduct of the jury in this case. By the law of England it was necessary that they should be unanimous in coming to a verdict, and when they found that  they were equally and hopelessly divided they resolved on getting as expedituously as possible out of the difficulty by choosing one of their number to settle the question of life or death. A verdict' agreed upon in this haphazard fashion, was given under false pretences, and cannot therefore be allowed to stand. The remarkable thing is that under the circumstances the chairman, when he saw the whole responsibility was made to rest upon himself, should have given his casting vote for wilful murder, and not for manslaughter. It is to be hoped that extraordinary conduct like that of which the Derby jury was guilty is exceptional and tb at the twelve men who are selected from the common body of their fellowcitizens to sit in judgment upon a fellow-creature act in general with a sense of responsibility resting upon them, and with a desire to perform, in a right spirit, the public duty which they have been summoned to discharge. But grave suspicions that juries are not always what they ought to be must, nevertheless, be engendered in many minds and the opponents of capital punishment would be justified in making the most of a case like that which has just happened at Derby. To men of a certain order of minds it may not seem at all blameworthy to settle a difficulty by the simple and easy process of drawing lots, and as the benches in our courts of law where juries sit are all open to just such moo, it becomes a grave question for consideration whether it is proper, in such circumstances, to retain in the statutebook the penalty of death for the crime of murder, whether committed deliberately as by Kate Webster, or in a sudden access of fu,y as by Gerald Mainwaring.