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executed, and there is an end of it; or the murderer escapes, and 
triumphs over justice, and there also is an end of it, for a prisoner 
~ can never be tried again after once he is acquitted. 
In the Bill introduced by Sir Henry James in 1883, it was pro- 
posed to give every defendant convicted of a capital crime an 
absolute right, irrespective of the opinion of the judge who tried 
the case, to apply to the Court of Appeal for a new trial, not only 
on the ground that the judge was mistaken in his law, but also on 
the ground that the verdict was against the evidence, or was 
founded on insufficient evidence. 
In non-capital crimes the leave of the court of trial was to be 
required to enable a defendant to apply for a new trial to the 
Court of Appeal on a question of fact. The action of the standing 
committee to which the Bill was referred was very decidedly in the 
direction of extending rather than limiting the absolute right of 
appeal, and had the Bill in its final shape become law, it can 
hardly be doubted that almost every conviction for murder, and a 
large number of convictions for other crimes, would henceforth 
have been followed by an application to the Court of Appeal for a 
new trial. 
It is not pretended for a moment that any system can give us 
absolute security against an occasional doubtful conviction, or even 
that a Court of Appeal would be infallible ; indeed, it is quite 
possible that a prisoner’s pecuniary resources would determine the 
appeal, rather than the intrinsic merits of the verdict ; nevertheless, 
cogent reasons weigh down all these objections, and the matter of 
grave importance is to determine how a prisoner sentenced to 
death could avail himself of the benefit a Court of Appeal might 
afford him. 
In civil cases new trials can only be applied for immediately 
after judgment, but the course contemplated in. the Criminal 
Appeal Bill was an application made by the defendant for an 
appeal within a week after judgment, and it is clear that in capital 
cases the application, if it is to be made at all, must be made 
quickly. A prisoner sentenced to death is usually executed in less 
than three weeks after judgment, so that in capital cases it may be 
