Читать книгу The Judges and the Judged - Charles Kingston - Страница 8

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Every successful lawyer has his own recipe for that very nebulous and disappointing sprite, Fame. Whereas one will advise the aspirant to speak on every possible occasion and thrust himself unashamedly into the limelight, another will warn him solemnly against undue confidence and loquacity. A believer in the former theory, who eventually attained the comfortable if undistinguished position of county court judge, was noted for a very violent style when cross-examining. He maintained that questions pitched in a high tone and with fierce emphasis terrified witnesses and impressed onlookers, and it is not surprising that he was one of the leaders of the bullying school of forensic performers. But his blatant theatricalisms frequently led him into ridiculous situations and blunders.

“Did you know the deceased?” he shouted at a timid witness.

“Yes, sir,” she answered, in a whisper.

“Is he living or dead?” was the next question, delivered with characteristic histrionics.

There is another type of barrister who considers that success lies not in examination or cross-examination but in that speech to the jury which forms the last appeal of all. He is very useful when there is really no defence, for frequently he can confuse the issue and conjure the jury into believing that black is white. One of the leading exponents of this school was the late Digby Seymour, Q.C., a prominent barrister who began by aiming at the Lord Chancellorship and ended by accepting gratefully a county court judgeship. Seymour’s greatest feat was the securing of an acquittal for a man charged with assaulting and robbing the keeper of a livery stable. There was no contradiction of the evidence produced by the prosecution, but Seymour delivered a lengthy speech in the course of which he referred to the boundless prairies of America, the autocracy of the Czar of Russia, Magna Carta, the price of food and, in fact, everything except the offence with which his client was charged. In spite of counsel’s eloquence the judge, feeling certain that the jury could not be in two minds, confined his summing-up to ten minutes, and was sorry within half an hour when the jury returned with a verdict of not guilty.

There was one oration of Seymour’s known at the Bar as the “flowing manes” speech, which nearly every solicitor in England knew and admired. It was given its first performance during an important action in the High Court when it won a verdict against the weight of evidence. The result was that a solicitor who had a weak case which needed buttressing invariably retained Seymour if he could and accompanied the brief with a request that the “flowing mane” speech might be “turned on.” The consequence of this popularity was that the “flowing manes” were “trotted out” on behalf of murderers, breakers of contracts, impostors and jilted maidens or faithless lovers. Some juries refused to be hypnotized by the learned gentleman’s verbal pictures of Arabian steeds galloping across boundless deserts, but one victory in ten forlorn hopes is an achievement, and the speech served Digby Seymour as well as it did his clients.

If he were alive to-day he would be indignant if anyone suggested that he was not an expert examiner and cross-examiner, but he had a failing, very common among the experts, of overdoing it. One example will be sufficient. He was engaged along with another barrister, Williams, Q.C., in a very important case involving a large sum of money, and after the first trial had gone against his clients an appeal was entered and the case ordered to be re-tried before the same judge. To Seymour was allotted the duty of examining one of the principal witnesses, and he had clearly finished when on second thoughts he decided to put one more question.

“I believe after the conclusion of the previous trial you had an interview with my learned friend, Mr. Williams?” he said.

“That is so,” said the witness.

“You asked my learned friend a question, did you not?”

The witness nodded.

“What was that question?” said Seymour blandly.

“I wanted to know why it was that we lost the action,” said the witness slowly.

“And what was my friend’s reply?”

“He said, sir,” answered the witness, in a confident manner, “that if it hadn’t been for the damned fool of a judge we’d have won easily.”

During the roar of laughter that ensued Mr. Williams rose to protest, but the judge treated the question good-humouredly.

“You may not have said it, Mr. Williams, but you probably thought it,” he remarked dryly. “I know that when I was at the Bar I cultivated a profound contempt for the judges.”

Fortunately the hectoring, bullying barrister is practically unknown in our courts to-day, and this is not alone due to our judges. The higher tone in the legal profession can be traced to the stricter supervision of the General Council of the Bar and also to the influence of public opinion. The judges will not tolerate irrelevancy and they are no longer afraid to protect witnesses at the expense of eminent counsel. In the old days almost every cross-examination began with a crude insult.

“Come, sir,” said Serjeant Vaughan, to a respectable tradesman, who had been summoned as a witness, “you tell us that you manufacture hemp? Well, I’d advise you to keep some for your own neck—you’ll be certain to require it.”

“In any case, sir,” the witness retorted, “I’ll have enough left over for you.”

It might be supposed from this that Vaughan was a man of obscure origin and without any pretensions to the rank of gentleman—there were many of that type flourishing at the Bar in his time—but he was a distinguished product of Rugby and Oxford and in private life was as amiable as he was modest. He had learned his law in a rough school, however, and he believed that the only way to extract the truth from a witness was to bully and insult him.

“Where did you get that villainous face of yours from?” he asked another witness.

“From my father, sir,” said the man quietly.

“And what was your father, pray?” said Vaughan sneeringly.

“A barrister,” was the reply which was torrential in its effect.

Vaughan in due course reached the bench and thus being enabled to look at justice from a fresh angle did his best to eliminate bullies at the Bar, but they survived for many years after his death, and it was not until scandal was caused by the methods of certain barristers that their race was stamped out. It is no longer permissible to treat a witness as though he were a criminal or to turn a lawsuit into a trial of anyone except the principals. One of the contributing causes to a much delayed reform was the suicide of a young woman who happening to be present at a street accident was called as a witness when the injured party took action. Naturally she was a very important witness, indeed, on her evidence hung the issue, and counsel for the defendant, anxious to discredit her testimony, cross-examined her all about her past, dragging into light certain incidents which she thought known only to herself and her former lover, now dead. Distressed beyond measure by her humiliating experience she drowned herself that evening, and the death of this obscure woman did more to reform the less reputable side of the Bar than all the efforts of judges extending over half a century.

One of the worst offenders was Edwin James, who had a face of brass and nerves of steel. His most common trick was to accuse a hostile witness of dishonesty, which may be considered the limit of audacity seeing that James accepted a large sum of money from a defendant who desired not to be cross-examined severely and also sold a client’s case to the other side for twelve hundred pounds. James’s ignorance was proverbial at the Bar and yet when he had been in the House of Commons a few years there were rumours that Lord Palmerston intended to appoint him Solicitor-General. Hawkins meeting a prominent politician asked him if the rumour was true.

“I don’t know,” was the answer, “but as James is a leader of your profession I don’t see why he shouldn’t get the post. Is there any objection to his promotion?”

“Well, you can judge for yourself when I tell you that at the Bar he is known as Necessity,” said Hawkins, with that wintry smile of his which always accompanied one of his rare jokes.

“Why do you call him Necessity?” said the politician.

“Because he knows no law,” said Hawkins.

Not long afterwards James crashed, his sudden and unexpected resignation of his seat in Parliament and the recordership of Brighton giving the first public hint of malpractices for which he was subsequently disbarred.

James was a formidable cross-examiner for physical rather than intellectual reasons. He had no special gifts and his knowledge of the world was derived from the underworld, but it is not surprising that many witnesses were terrified by that bloated countenance, those bulging eyes and that voice which alternated between a scream and a howl.

“Woman, where were you on the afternoon of January the third?” he shouted at a witness, an elderly lady who was reduced to quivering terror by his bullying impertinences.

Unable to speak she kept on her feet only by clutching the front of the witness box.

“Why don’t you answer counsel?” said the judge gently.

“He frightens me so, my lord,” she stammered.

“So he does me, madam,” said the judge quietly.

The snub, however, had no effect on James, who frequently brushed his way through many difficulties to a verdict in his favour, triumphing over all opposition because his opponents disdained to use the same unworthy and dishonourable weapons.

His impudence was as boundless as his impertinence, and it was seldom he encountered an emergency to which he was not equal. When he was earning the biggest income at the Bar he was in a state of chronic impecuniosity that he had to borrow small sums right and left to stave off summonses. One of his victims was the landlord of his chambers, who was amazed that a counsel who figured in almost every great case should be a defaulter for rent. He waited for nearly two years before he began to dun James, and, failing to extort a cheque, thought of an ingenious scheme to rouse the barrister to a sense of decency. With the aid of a friendly solicitor he prepared a statement of his case against his tenant for counsel’s opinion as to what course he ought to pursue. By arrangement with the solicitor this document was submitted to Edwin James, and a few hours later the landlord had it back with the following addition in the handwriting of counsel, “In my opinion this is a case which admits of only one remedy—patience. Edwin James.”

In his early days at the Bar when he was shouting his way to success and notoriety James was engaged to defend a woman charged with theft. She was a seamstress who visited her employers’ houses and her weakness for taking souvenirs of her visits without permission earned for her an unenviable reputation long before she found her way into the dock at the local assizes. There was a clear case against his client, and James’s defence was that the prosecutor had condoned the offence by employing her after he had discovered that she was a thief.

By the time the prosecutor had reached the witness-box there was not much hope for the prisoner, but James had the admirable quality of never surrendering, and he cross-examined with the air of one playing a winning game.

“Now, sir,” he bellowed, “you say that the prisoner is a thief?”

“Yes, I do, sir, and I have the best of reasons for saying it.”

“And what is that best of reasons?” said James contemptuously.

“She confessed to me she was,” said the witness.

“So she confessed to you, did she?” said James, in a more amiable tone. “I suppose as a result you dismissed her at once and refused to employ her again?”

“No, sir, I didn’t,” was the candid reply. “As she was so very useful I gave her work after she admitted she had stolen from me.”

Before he spoke again James surveyed the court with a knowing look.

“Then, sir,” he thundered, “are we to understand that you employ dishonest people to work for you even if their rascality is known?”

“Of course I do!” exclaimed witness, with a laugh. “Otherwise, how could I get assistance from a lawyer?”

“That will do,” said James hurriedly, and became absorbed in a study of his brief.

In another case James sought to confuse the witness by asking him a question which while relevant had no great bearing on the issue. The witness answered promptly and correctly, greatly to the surprise of counsel.

“You anticipated that question, didn’t you, and looked it up?” said James, thinking to belittle the effect of the reply.

“Yes, I did,” said the man candidly, “I borrowed an encyclopædia and copied from it.”

“Why did you go to all that trouble?” said James.

“Because my old father told me that some fool of a lawyer would be bound to ask me a lot of silly questions and that this would be one of them.”

I suppose there is nothing a barrister resents more while conducting a case than constant interruptions by the judge, more especially interference with the examination of witnesses. James was not exceptional in showing his annoyance, and once he did so with a polite sarcasm which was more effective than his usual violent methods. He was half-way through his examination when the judge interrupted to ask several questions of the witness, questions which rather spoilt the whole case from counsel’s point of view. When his lordship had finished James kept his seat and the witness left the box. Then followed an unexpected silence, terminated by the judge asking James if he had anything more to say.

“Oh, yes, my lord, I have,” he answered coolly. “I am merely waiting for your lordship to call your next witness.”

Such was the man who could command an income of £10,000 a year and who was once courted by leaders of his party. Such was the man who fell so low that when he reappeared after a long absence in his once favourite arena, the Old Bailey, it was in the capacity of clerk to a tenth-rate solicitor who out of charity employed the ruined old man so that he could earn a few shillings necessary to pay for his board and lodging. What must have been the feelings of James when from a back bench he faced one of his former rivals—now an honoured judge—and listened to barristers who when the name of Edwin James was almost the best known in the profession were glad to pay respect to him because he was their acknowledged leader?