Need of a Court of Criminal Appeal
The Home Office, while exercising a private function of reconsideration grounded on the royal prerogative of mercy, emphatically disclaims being a court of appeal or a judicial tribunal in any sense of the word. Yet the consideration of a convict’s case rests alone with the Secretary of State. It is a matter of unwritten law that the Home Secretary shall act individually and solely upon his own responsibility, and none of his colleagues are to assume or take part therein.
There are numerous instances where judges, witnesses, and juries have gone wrong. Indeed, it will be found that even in cases which have seemed the clearest and least complicated in the trial grievous mistakes have been made. But in England the blame rests on the public and the bar in that no means are provided to set the wrong right. What a difference it would have made in my life if I had been granted a second trial! I could have called other witnesses, submitted fresh evidence, and refuted false testimony. Is it not the climax of injustice that men and women, if sued for money, even for a few shillings, can appeal from court to court—even to the House of Lords, the English court of last resort; but when character, all that life holds dear, and life itself, are in jeopardy, a prisoner’s fate may depend upon the incompetent construction of one man, and there is no appeal?
A hard-worked Secretary of State, whose time, night and day, is crowded with every kind of duty, correspondence, and labor, in the House of Commons or in the Home Office, has to consider a vast number of petitions, complaints, and miscarriages of justice, or too severe sentences, any one of which might require hours and sometimes days to investigate. He is assisted by several officers, but, strange to say, it is no part of their qualifications (or that of the Home Secretary himself), that they should be familiar with the criminal law or the prosecution or defense of prisoners. These permanent officials are, besides, occupied with hundreds of other matters which come before the Home Office, on which they have to guide their chief. Think of the untold sufferings of individuals and families, the shame and degradation which they would be spared, if England had a court of criminal appeal.