Whether, as some people tell us, the quality of the bar, and of police-courts in particular, has deteriorated of late years, whether it is assumed at present the plea of “public interests” covers every excess of zeal and every abuse of privilege which an advocate may permit himself, or whether it is that the inquiries before the magistrate, which have of late years grown to such inordinate dimensions, afford an entirely new field for the display of such excesses, we will not undertake to say. But the fact is indisputable. Nor are the discreditable scenes which distinguished the court-house at Richmond during the examination of Kate Webster, the only ones which have recently drawn attention to the growing coarseness and inquisitorial tyranny with which cross-examinations are conducted.
No. 32.
EXAMINATION OF ELLEN FULFORD.
It was not merely in examining witnesses that the counsel for the prisoner on this occasion indulged in observations which ought not to have been tolerated for a moment by anyone who may be presiding over the proceedings in a court of justice.
It is perfectly true that great latitude must of necessity be allowed to counsel in their efforts to extract the truth from obstinate or interested witnesses. But in the hands of an accomplished advocate, who is a gentleman at the same time, this need never degenerate into bullying or browbeating.
There are witnesses, of course, on whom tenderness or courtesy would be wasted, and for whom no cross-examination can be too searching or severe.
But where an advocate, through want of skill or self-control, applies to one class of witnesses a mode of treatment only applicable to another, it is time for the judge or justice to interfere, and to protect respectable persons from gross outrages and indignities.
Nell Fulford had a series of questions put to her by Mr. Slapperton, which, naturally enough, raised the indignation of the bench.
It would be difficult to fetter an advocate by any hard and fast rules, and both judges and magistrates naturally felt great reluctance in interfering with him in the discharge of his duty.