The Express. — 1864-03-29 (London, England)

LONDON, TUESDAY, MARCH 29.  A citimiNAL trial, of that peculiar class loved of novelists, in which the first question is not to bring home the guilt to an individual, but to dia. cover whether any crime at all has been committed, has lately filled the columns of the French newspapers. In this country we have, in cases such as those in which the defence lies in substituting the hypothesis of suicide for that of murder, or in suggesting that an infant found dead was never born alive, frequent examples of the infinite 'ingenuity which can be expended by the advocates of opposing theories, and of the real difficulty in which juries often find themselves in ascertaining the precise significance of the facts. But in the case at Aix, which has just been concluded, the difficulty was enhanced by the circumstance that both the alleged victim and the alleged criminal were alive, and that by the genius of French law the diametrically conflicting evidence of both was admitted.  On the 7th July last Menticz Roux, coach man in the service of M. ARMAND, a wealthy merchant of lilontpellier, was discovered in the cellar of his master's house, bound hand and foot, with a cord round his neck, and in a state of insensibility. The alarm being given, he was removed to the hospital, restoratives were administered, but his state was considered so serious that the last ucraments were administered to him. Soon, however, he rallied, and in a few days was pronounced perfectly well. There seems to have been no appearance of blows on His person, except a trifling mark on the back of the neck, and the insensibility which, as it seemed real to the medical men, can scarcely have been wholly feigned, was attributed to asphyxia caused by the strangulation of the rope. The question then was, how he came to be in such a situation. His own account, given on receiving the sacraments, and steadily persisted in throughout, was that he had given offence to his master, whom he described as a man of extreme violence of temper, by calling his house a hovel, and that, incensed by the insult, M. ARMAND had waited till he saw hini enter the cellar, had then followed, and after felling him by a blow on the head, had bound him and left him to die in the position in which he was found. On this accusation an indictment of assault with intent to murder was preferred against M. ARMAND, but it was subsequently withdrawn, and the trial proceeded only on a charge of aggravated assault.  The plea in defence consisted in not merely • denial of guilt, but in a counter assertion that the whole circumstances had been brought about by Rorx's own agency, with the sole purpose of extorting money from M. ARM♦ND, by holding over him so terrible an accusation. Here it was obviously, first, a question whether a single individual could, unassisted, bind himself in an attitude such as that in which Rorx was found. One of the surgeons examined solved this problem by performing the feat on himself in open court. And it seems, from the account of our correspondent, that as, after any startling suicide by hanging, it often becomes • favourite amusement with boys to mimic the process, the fashionable society of Aix has, more harmlessly, been infected with the like spirit of imitation, and that senates for the illustrat,onl of self-binding have now taken the place of spirit rapping and other social sensation meetings. The next question, however, was one of graver science. It was whether the actual symptoms of injury, which led professional men to pronounce Rorx at the point of death, could have been produced otherwise than by violent attack. The Montpellier faculty seems to have been divided on this point. But the balance was turned by the evidence of Dr. TAnnter, a high Parisian authority in medical jurisprudence, who was distinctly of opinion that much of what had appeared had been simulated, and that what was real had been produced by the accuser's own act. Several of his professional brethren were converted by Dr. explanation. And certainly it is not easy for plain common sense to understand how insensibility could have been produced by a murderous blow which left no distinct mark, or how violent strangulation could have been carried to a point so close to death, while the victim was as well as ever in a few days after. As to the character of M. ARMAND, it was proved that, though of hasty temper, he was of humane and even amiable disposition, and that he was held in the highest esteem by numerous friends. Roux, on the other hand, was of notoriously bad character. Moved by such considerations, the jury brought in, after very short deliberation, a verdict of not guilty, in spite of a very strenuous charge by the presiding judge in an opposite sense. Here, however, ends all resemblance between the case and anything which could have occurred in England. For the French law, while it refers criminal questions to • jury, reserves civil damages to the arbitrament of the judge ; and Itiirx having brought an action against his late master for damages for the alleged assault, he was awarded by the judge 20,000 francs the very day after the jury had found that no assault had