The Noitgedacht Murder. 123 



Grounds of the Application Unchallenged. 



'* The two grounds in 3upporb of the application, as the learned 

 Attorney General had pointed out, stood practically unchallenged. They 

 were that ' owing to the popular prejudice stated to affect the accused 

 persons adversely on the one hand and owing to the connection of the 

 evidence in this case with obeah and obeah-workers on the other, and 

 further owing to the aforementioned publications and public speeches it is 

 advisable to have a special jury struck ; now, if there was one more im- 

 portant consideration than another in the re-trial of any cause it was that 

 the accused person or persons should have a fair trial and the Court 

 passed on at once to any circumstances which might go to show that 

 the allegation of the possibility of an unfair trial was true. The likelihood 

 of an adverse trial was said to rest upon the amount of popular prejudice 

 that had been excited in the cause and in the second paragraph of the 

 reasons of the application it was said that ' public interest was aroused 

 throughout the Colony at the preliminary inquiry of this case and 

 popular indignation was evinced against the perpetrators of the murder 

 in the public Press of this Colony and otherwise by which popular 

 feeling the eight accused are stated by one of their counsel, Hon. J. 

 S. McArthur, to be adversely affected.' 



The Pbess and Preliminary Trials. 

 " At the opening of the cause and after it was postponed in the month 

 of June the learned Attorney General referred to it and I think I did too ; 

 there had been not only a trial but there had been a conviction and there 

 had been a proceeding to execution of those eight persons by the public 

 Press of this Colony and the public Press had always done, and would 

 persist in describing the proceedings taken before the Magistrates of 

 this Colony as preliminary trials. If the reporters in Court did not know 

 better they should be corrected by those who did, and told that there 

 were no such things as preliminary trials, and that there was only one 

 trial and that, in that Court, and also that when a Magistrate sat he only 

 enquired into the circumstances whether he thought himself that there 

 should be a trial. That seemed to him to be approaching a scandal. 

 The length to which the Press had gone in its expressions and in com- 

 menting on the evidence of a particular witness by statin" - that " in 

 order to save his skin he gave the show away, was improper. A more 

 indecorous remark there could not be. What was the result of a matter 

 of that kind ? As had been pointed out and as appeared from the extracts 

 an enormous amount of unhealthy opinion had been excited in this case 

 which, unless great care was taken and the greatest precaution adopted, 

 must inevitably result in affecting the prisoners adversely. 



Public Opinion and the Accused. 

 " Headed by the Press popular opinion had been educated to look 

 upon those unfortunate people as already standing under a sti<nna. 

 Anything more dreadful than that he did not know ; that had not been 



