§ LORD CAMPBELL moved the Second Reading of a Bill for the Improvement of Procedure in Criminal Courts. He hoped in a few words to state grounds which should be sufficient to induce their Lordships to agree to the principle of the Bill. The object was to prevent the defeat of justice, which not unfrequently took place by means of technicalities wholly unconnected with the guilt or innocence of the party. One great source of such defeat was to be found in the variance in what was illegal in the indictment, and what came out in the proof. For example, it might be alleged that the prisoner stole a cow, and it turned out to be a heifer; that he had stolen five lambs, and it turned out that they were sheep. In things of that sort it was proposed to allow the Judge power to amend the indictment upon the proof as it came out; and, if necessary, the trial should be postponed; but, if it could proceed without depriving the prisoner of the opportunity of asserting his innocence, it should proceed without delay. By this power, which he thought might be satisfactorily given to the Judge, much scandal would be obviated in the administration of justice. There was another principle involved in the Bill, which was to allow a more general allegation of the crime that was charged. According to the old forms it was necessary to enter with great minuteness into details in an indictment for murder, specifying, for instance, the length and depth of the wound, the nature of the instrument with which the crime was committed, and the like. As the law now stood, it was necessary in a very particular manner to describe how the death actually was caused, and if it turned out that the death was not actually caused in the manner described, the prosecution failed. To avoid that danger, counts in indictments were infinitely multiplied. All he proposed was so to frame the law that an indictment for murder might simply charge the prisoner on such a day and in such a place with "killing or murdering." There were other enactments all introduced with the same view of preventing a defeat of justice; but he hoped he had stated enough to induce their Lordships to give the Bill a second reading.
§ Bill read 2a.
§ House adjourned till To-morrow.