This morning I was setting off for Dundee when Willie Marshall entered the compartment. He was dressed in his Sunday best, and I wondered why he was going to Dundee on a Wednesday.
"Hullo, Willie!" I cried, "what's on to-day?"
He looked troubled and angry.
"I've been summoned to serve on the jury that's tryin' that dawmed rat that stailt ten pund frae the minister," he said viciously, "and I had little need to lose a day, for I hae far mair work than I can dae. Mossbank's twa cairts cam in yestreen, and he's swearin' like onything that he maun hae them by the nicht." Willie is a joiner, and most of his work is building and repairing carts.
"So you think that Nosie Broon is guilty?" I said with a smile.
"Of coorse he is," he cried with emphasis.
"But," I said seriously, "you'll maybe alter your mind when you hear the evidence."
He grunted.
"Dawn nae fear! I'll show him that he's no to drag me awa frae ma work for nothing!"
He opened his Dundee Courier, and I sat and thought of the trial by jury method. I would not condemn it on the strength of Willie's dangerous misunderstanding of what it means, but I do condemn it on other grounds. Weighing evidence is a difficult enough business even for the specialist, for it is almost impossible to eliminate emotion in forming a judgment. With a jury of citizens, some of them possibly illiterate, too much depends on the advocates, or on outside causes.