The Wanted Man by Henry Cecil

Author:Henry Cecil
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: House of Stratus

The judge was pleased to receive the letter for two reasons. First, he never liked difficulties with counsel. The Bar and the Bench get on extremely well together on the whole and no one likes the occasional skirmishes which take place between them. The second reason he was pleased was that at first reading it confirmed entirely his opinion of Partridge. Then suddenly he had a thought. ‘I wonder if there was a picture of Gladstone in the paper yesterday,’ he said to himself.

CHAPTER NINE

A Chat in the Shop

There are various types of judges. The best type never comes to a final conclusion until he’s heard the whole of the evidence and the arguments. Naturally in a plain case his mind is bound to tend towards being on the side of the party who is obviously in the right. But even in such cases he has such control over his mind that he is able to keep it open almost until the last word has been said on the subject. The worst type of judge comes to an early conclusion when there has been insufficient evidence and insufficient argument. Having come to this conclusion he tries to steer the case in such a way that in the end the conclusion seems obvious. But sometimes in the course of doing this he is suddenly brought up against something which he had never thought of and he is so affected by this and sometimes so shocked that instead of being in favour of the plaintiff he immediately becomes in favour of the defendant. In such cases he usually runs the case harder for the defendant than he ran it for the plaintiff in the first instance. And thereafter the unfortunate plaintiff who, to begin with, thought the judge was all sweetness and light finds to his horror that the blue-eyed boy in the eyes of the judge is now the defendant. So he feels even more disappointed when he loses the case than if his hopes had never been raised in the first instance. The experienced advocate dealing with such a judge knows what to do. When the judge makes it appear at an early stage that he is in favour of the plaintiff he bides his time. If he immediately tried to change the judge’s view, it would probably only strengthen it. Possibly even to such an extent that he would feel unable to change it. So counsel waits until he has the opportunity of making a very telling point indeed on behalf of the defendant and from that moment he has the judge in his pocket because consciously or unconsciously, a judge will not like to perform too many volte faces in the same case.

Judge Ward was not one of the best or the worst judges but he tended towards being in the lower half of the league table. So in the present case he had started off strongly in favour of Mr Partridge. His whole judicial instinct objected to the man being suspected for wholly insufficient reasons.

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