The Journal of Jurisprudence (Volume 29) - Tapa blanda

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1885. Excerpt: ... THE JOURNAL OF JURISPRUDENCE. TECHNICAL OBJECTIONS AND ESCAPES FROM JUSTICE. NO. IV. Second--Place (continued). When the locus delicti is in a town, it is generally sufficiently described by the name of a street or place without reference to parish, the boundaries of which are not generally known, being sometimes arbitrarily drawn to suit the convenience of local authorities. In country districts, where parish boundaries are better fixed, it is usual to round off the description by reference to the parish in which the locus is situated, though the rule is not imperative if the place can be sufficiently marked without it. In technical practice, however, an error in the name of the parish has, somewhat anomalously, been held important or the reverse, according as the ecclesiastical division was in the town or country. While in towns the mistake of laying a street in a wrong parish has been held no objection if the street was otherwise correctly described,--case of John Auld and others (2 Alison 260),--an error in the name of a rural parish has been less favourably judged, though the place was otherwise unmistakeably distinguished. The first reported case in point is that of Elspeth Robertson, 1728 (2 Hume 208), for the murder of her own child "in a little room at the end of a hayloft contiguous to the dwelling-house of the late Lord Colville, within the parish of Torrieburn and county of Perth." The panel objected that in the county of Perth there was no such parish or place as Torrieburn; and even if there were such a place, still she would prove that, at the time libelled, she was elsewhere, in the parish of Torrieburn and county of Fife. In answer the prosecutor allowed his mistake, which was owing, he said, to the immediate contiguity of Torrieburn to P...