The climax to one of Shanghai's most sensational trials of recent ears occurred in Hf. M. Supreme Court on Tuesday afternoon, Feb. 11, when a'verdiet of "Not Guilty" was returned by the jury of twelve, after 42 minutes' deliberation, to a charge Jof murder brought against Sergeant Ernest William Peters and Prob. Sergi. William Alfred Judd, of the Mr. N. L. Sparke, foreman of the Jury, uttered' the two words. that freed the two men.
As soon as the red and black robes of Judge A. G. Mossop had disappeared behind the court-room doors, the ferowd rushed around the barriers shifts, There are two exceptions to this—one is a defence of insanity, the other is a ease where there Is a statutory exception.—but we. are not concerned with these here. The burden never shifts. Eight months ago, in an important ease which was heard in the House of Lords in England, Viscount Sankey, the Lord Chancellor, expressed him: self as follows:—
"Throvithout te web of the English criminal law one golden thread.
Ways to be seen; that it way the duty of the prosecution to prove the prison fullt.—-IE at the end of and the whois of the ease, reasonable doubt, rested by the evidence given either by the proseeution or the prisoner, as to whether the Hprsoner killed. the' deceased, With malicious Intention, the prosecution as hot made ut 2 ease, andthe. prisoner fe" enilted to an "acquittal.
Matter what the charge! or where the {ia}, the principle: that the prosecution must prove. the guilt of the prisoner was part of the common law of England, fund no attempt to whittle It down separating. them from the active Participants in the trial, and sur Founding the two policemen, shook their hands and congratulated them, And that crowd of supporters was not only composed of friends of Peters and Judd, but of many others, of all walks of life, who had sat throughout the long trial.
Thus ended a trial which opened Jast Tuesday morning; a trial each hearing of which lasted from 945, am, to about 6.10 pam. each evening with an hour anda half's interval each day for luncheon; a trial in which no Jess than 29 witnesses gave evidence for the prosecution; and {rial which attracted so much interest and attention in Shanghai that the court-room was crowded out by! fan early hour each day.
"The two men were accused of the murder of Mau Te-pian, a Chinese beggar, it being alleged by the prosecution that they had thrown the man into the Hongkew Creek in the early hours of December 1, 1935, and that, although the man was rescued by a Chinese hawker, he died on December 6 of double' pneumonia
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.