CHAPTER XII.
THE C.C.R.
The Court for Crown Cases Reserved is a modern institution, whose workings are not always quite understood by the public.
In every case which is tried before a jury there are two questions to be decided. The first is whether the evidence produced by the plaintiff alone is sufficient in point of law to justify a verdict. The second is whether the balance of evidence at the end of the trial is in favour of the plaintiff or the defendant.
The first of these questions is for the judge, the second for the jury. From the verdict of the jury there is, strictly speaking, no appeal. From the decision of the judge an appeal may be carried right up to the House of Lords.
But in criminal cases, where the Queen is treated as plaintiff, there was anciently no such method of reviewing the judge’s decision. Now a special court has been established, embracing all the common law judges of the High Court, who sit in a body to decide these questions. It was to this tribunal that Tressamer had intended to resort.
But though the prisoner’s legal advisers, both her former and her present one, looked to this court for their client’s deliverance from the extreme penalty of the law, the general public turned to a very different remedy, that of agitation, to be exerted upon a very different authority, an impressionable politician in the Home Office.
Up to the hour of her conviction public opinion had run strongly against Eleanor. Whether this was deliberately aimed at by Tressamer or not, it was the consequence of the policy adopted by him. But no sooner had the law pronounced her doom than the tide turned with startling rapidity, and a gigantic agitation was at once set on foot for a reprieve.