Misdirection in Excluding Corroboration of Prisoner’s Statement
Now the serious, most serious, consideration of counsel is asked for in comparing the evidence of these three witnesses—Gore, Callery, and Michael Maybrick—as given at the coroner’s inquest, as it appears in the coroner’s depositions, at the magisterial inquiry, as it appears in the magistrates’ depositions, and as given at the trial. It will be seen that there are great discrepancies as to the place in the room from which Michael Maybrick took the half-used bottle in which Mr. Davies, the analyst, subsequently detected one-tenth of a grain of arsenic in solution. It is suggested that Mr. Michael’s evidence at the inquest is the true account of where he got the bottle, and that his evidence at the trial is cooked, to suit the evidence of Gore, and that the identity of the bottle is not established. The statement, which in her statement to the jury Mrs. Maybrick said she was prevented by the policeman from making to Mrs. Briggs, the moment that person told her about arsenic being found in the meat juice, was communicated by Mrs. Maybrick at once to her solicitors, Mr. Arnold and Richard Cleaver; and it is submitted that it was a misdirection of the judge to exclude their evidence in corroboration of such a material and important fact in her favor, and a misdirection in refusing to allow corroboration in that way of what was in evidence, and did corroborate it—thereby constituting a matter which the jury should have had before them, as having a bearing on her statement.