The jury immediately, without hesitation, found the prisoner guilty.
Mr. Justice Buller then ordered the judgment in this case to be arrested, and the recognizances of the persons bound to prosecute to be respited until the December sessions.
At the commencement of the sessions at the Old Bailey, on the 10th of December 1790, Judge Ashurst addressed the prisoner nearly in the following terms:—“You have been capitally convicted, under the statute 6 George I., of maliciously tearing, cutting, spoiling, and defacing the garments of Anne Porter, on the 18th of January last. Judgment has been arrested on two points,—one that the indictment is informal, the other that the statute does not reach the crime. Upon solemn consideration, the judges are of opinion that both the objections are well founded: but, although you are discharged from this indictment, yet you are within the purview of the common law. You are therefore to be remanded to be tried for a misdemeanor.”
He was accordingly, on the 13th of the same month, tried at Hicks’s Hall for the misdemeanor, in making an assault on Miss Anne Porter.
The trial lasted sixteen hours: there were three counts in the indictment; viz. for assaulting with intent to kill, for assaulting and wounding, and for a common assault.
The same witnesses were then called in support of the charge as appeared on the trial at the Old Bailey; and they gave very clear, correct, and circumstantial evidence, positively swearing to the person of the prisoner.
The prisoner produced two witnesses, Miss Amet and Mr. Mitchell, who attempted to prove an alibi, and the credit of their testimony was not impeached by any contradiction. The question therefore was, to which the jury would give credit; for the evidence on both sides was equally fair and unexceptionable, and the prisoner was acquitted.
The prisoner was again put to the bar at ten o’clock the next morning, and tried on the remaining indictments, on three of which he was found guilty; when the Court sentenced him to two years’ imprisonment in Newgate for each, and at the expiration of the time to find security for his good behaviour, himself in two hundred pounds, and two sureties in one hundred pounds each.