The Northern Daily Times. — 1856-06-09 (Liverpool, Merseyside, England)

ATTORNEY-GENERAL with regard to the medical witnesses brought up for the defence, and that subsequently followed by the JUDGE in summing up. Doctor LETELERBY, whose testimony had been relied on by the Crown for years, whose practical skill and unblemished character were thought allsufficient to justify the execution of other criminals, and to obtain a respite for two persons charged with similar crimes, was on this occasion not treated with the respect which he commanded during years of semi-official life. With respect to the summing up, the novel feature which has excited the most general animadverson, is the fact that the JUDGE did not go through the evidence as it came before the bench. The evidence, which the JUDGE style " commenced with the examination of Coon and PALMER'S visit to Shrewsbury, and what took place at the Raven-hotel—the summing up with a distinct reference to a subject—forgery—not before the court and the charge to the jury, with a review of the pecuniary difficulties of a man who had been living for years by the most disreputable practices of the turf—betting without adequate means to pay losses. These degressions, from the established line of procedure, have created a wide-spread sympathy for the accused and sentenced man, and coupled with the conflicting character of the medical and chemical evidence brought forward, there are thousands in this district, who, although they do not feel satisfied of PALMER'S innocence, and would hang him and every other man found guilty of murder, are desirous of seeing a respite granted, in order to give time to clear up all those points of his case which are manifestly open to doubt, and fit subjects for further and closer  investigation. The few short minutes in which the jury arrived at a verdict, after a ten days' trial, is another matter which has excited universal attention. All those who have waded through the daily reports of the trial, as they appeared in an abridged form in the newspapers, and those who have seen the evidence as printed in extenso, in two ponderous volumes, cannot help expressing their amazement at the ready manner in which the jurymen must have prepared their notes to have enabled them to decide on PALMER'S guilt within a couple of hours. We have devoted ten days to the study of those voluminous reports, and yet we are wholly incapable of offering the most vague opinion as to the guilt or innocence of the prisoner ; and we are not prepared to admit that those who were in court and heard the entire case, were at all likely to be enabled to form a more hasty judgment than those who read the arguments for and against, on a question of life and death. But without pretending to set up our humble abilities against those of the jury, and without wishing to impugn the dis interestedness and correctness of their verdict, we may observe that we are not singular in our mental weakness. Lord CAMPBELL seems to have shared the inability we feel and confess, for the learned Lord's summing up reads more like an allegory than a careful resume of the evidence adduced on both sides, and his charge to the Jury a sort of hieroglyphical picture which commences with the portrait of a swindler before the murderer, and the specific crime of which he is accused are brought prominently forward.  These are the principal phases in PALMER'S case, which have led to the change which has taken place in the public mind, in favour of an extension of time, to allow the medical men and chemists employed on,the trial to reconcile their many wide differences, not as to matters of theory, but as to  matters of fact. By respiting the prisoner for one month, nothing can be lost to the safety of society.  Death will be as terrible, and the work of the laws retribution as full of justice on the 14th of July, as