‘Those answers,’ I concluded, ‘are absolutely correct in every particular. The man whom I saw under the lamp, at eight o’clock on the night of the murder, behaved as the answers indicate. That concludes the evidence I have felt bound to tender.’ And I handed the slip of paper to the usher for inspection by the jury.
‘Prisoner,’ inquired the judge, ‘do you call any other witness?’
‘I do not, my lord.’
‘Then, gentlemen,’ said the judge, turning to the jury, ‘the one remark that I shall make to you is this—that if you believe the story of the prisoner’s witness, there can be little doubt but that the prisoner was the man whom the witness saw at the corner of Hauraki Street at eight o’clock on the night in question; and if that was so, it is clear, on the case of the prosecution, that he cannot have committed this murder. I should not be doing my duty if I did not point out to you that the witness in question is likely, to say the least, to be without bias in the prisoner’s favour, and that his evidence is very strongly corroborated indeed by the prisoner’s answers to the written questions put to him. Gentlemen, you will now consider your verdict.’
‘We are agreed, my lord,’ said the foreman.
‘Gentlemen of the jury,’ sung out the clerk of arraigns, ‘are you all agreed upon your verdict?’
‘We are.’
‘And that verdict is?’
‘Not guilty.’
‘And that is the verdict of you all?’