Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of Judicature of the State of Vermont (Volume 2); With Cases of Practice and Rules of the Court, Commencing With the Nineteenth Century - Tapa blanda

Reseña del editor

This historic book may have numerous typos or missing text. Not indexed. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1810. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... suie count. They appealed to this Court, and now a Kiitle et ai. question is made, whether the defendants, who had been arraigned and pleaded not guilty to the indictment, were held to defend on the three first counts in the indictment. It is insisted for the State, that the appeal set the whole judgment afloat, and the defendants must be tried as if the indictment had been presented to this Court; that no injury can accrue to the defendants from a trial upon all the counts; for if they are innocent of the charges in the three first counts in the indictment, a trial upon them cannot injure. For the defendants it was contended, that where a charge is single in an indictment, and indeed in every case where the accused is acquitted in the County Court, it has never been understood that the government had a right of appeal. In such cases it has been the uniform practice, since the existence of the government, for die defendant to go without day from the County Court. That it would be a strange perversion of this practice to oblige the defendants, who have been acquitted of the main charges of an indictment contained in several counts, if they chanced to be convicted of a trifling breach of the law counted upon in the same indictment in the lower Court, to be subjected,'on appeal, to another trial upon those counts upon which they had been acquitted. It is said, if they are innocent no injury can happen to them. We consider it a serious injury. It certainly is a heavy expense, to be constrained to bring a great number of witnesses on the stand, many of them from a great distance to prove our innocence. It certainly will operate a surprise State upon the defendants, who, relying on known and Kiule'etaJ. established practice, have omitted to summon their' witness...