Z.-(Section 599.) COMMITMENT OF A WITNESS FOR REFUSING TO ENTER INTO THE RECOGNIZANCE. :} To all or any of the peace officers in the said county of and to the keeper of the common gaol of the said county of in the said county of at Canada, Province of County of " of " at or " Whereas A. B., was lately charged before the undersigned (name of the justice of the peace), a justice of the peace in and for the said county of for that (dc., as in the summons to the witness), and it having been made to appear to (me) upon oath that E. F., was likely to give material evidence for the prosecution. (I) duly issued (my) summons to the said E. F., requiring him to be and appear before (me) on before such other justice justices of the peace as should then be there, to testify what he knows concerning the said charge so made against the said A. B. as aforesaid; and the said E. F. now appearing before (me) (or being brought before (me) by virtue of a warrant in that behalf to testify as aforesaid), has been now examined before (me) touching the premises, but being by (me) required to enter into a recognizance conditioned to give evidence against the said A. B., now refuses so to do: These are therefore to command you the said peace officers, or any one of you, to take the said E. F. and him safely convey to the common gaol at in the county aforesaid, and there deliver him to the said keeper thereof, together with this precept: And I do hereby command you, the said keeper of the said common gaol, to receive the said E F. into your custody in the said common gaol, there to imprison and safely keep him until after the trial of the said A. B. for the offence aforesaid, unless in the meantime the said E. F. duly enters into such recognizance as aforesaid, in the sum of before some one justice of the peace for the said county, conditioned in the usual form to appear at the court by which the said A. B. is or shall be tried, and there to give evidence upon the charge which shall then and there be preferred against the said A.B. for the offence aforesaid. 9 AA-(Section 599.) SUBSEQUENT ORDER TO DISCHARGE THE WITNESS. Canada, Province of County of To the keeper of the common gaol at county of the year of aforesaid. day of Whereas by (my) order dated the (instant) reciting that A. B. was lately before then charged before (me) for a certain offence therein mentioned, and that E. F. having appeared before (me) and being examined as a witness for the prosecution on that behalf, refused to enter into recognizance to give evidence against the said A. B., and I therefore thereby committed the said E. F. to your custody, and required you safely to keep him until after the trial of the said A. B. for the offence aforesaid; unless in the meantime be should enter into such recognizance as aforesaid; and whereas for want of sufficient evidence against the said A. B., the said A. B. has not been committed or holden to bail for the said offence, but on the contrary thereof has been since discharged, and it is therefore not necessary that the said E. F. should be detained longer in your custody: These are therefore to order and direct you the said keeper to discharge the said E. F. out of your custody, as to the said commitment, and suffer him to go at large. Given under my hand and seal, this , in the year aforesaid. at RECOGNIZANCE OF BAIL. day of in the J. S., [SEAL.] J. P, (Name of county.) day of in the county in Be it remembered that on the " " (labourer,) L. M. (butcher), personally " 9 , (grocer), and N. O. of came before (us) the undersigned, (two) justices of the peace for the county of and severally acknowledged themselves to owe to our Sovereign Lady the Queen, her heirs and successors, the several sums following, that is to say the said A. B. the sum of and the said L. M. and N. O. the sum of each, of good and lawful current money of Canada, to be made and " levied of their several goods and chattels, lands and tenements respectively; to the use of our said Sovereign Lady the Queen, her heirs and successors, if he, the said A. B., fails in the condition endorsed (or hereunder written). Taken and acknowledged the day and year first above mentioned, before us. at CONDITION. The condition of the within (or above) written recognizance, is such that whereas the said A. B. was this day charged before (us), the justices within mentioned for that (&c., as in the warrant); if, therefore, the said A. B. appears at the next court of oyer and terminer (or general gaol delivery or court of General or Quarter Sessions of the Peace) to be holden in and for the county of and there surrenders himself into the custody of the keeper of the common gaol (or lock-up house) there, and pleads to such indictment as may be found against him by the grand jury, for and in respect to the charge aforesaid, and takes his trial upon the same, and does not depart the said court without leave, then the said recognizance to be void, otherwise to stand in full force and virtue. Canada, J. S., J. P., (Name of county.) CC.-(Section 602.) WARRANT OF DELIVERANCE ON BAIL BEING GIVEN FOR A PRISONER ALREADY COMMITTED. Province of } To the keeper of the common gaol of the county of at in the said county. " " Whereas A. B. late of (labourer), has before (us) (two) justices of the peace in and for the said county of entered into his own recognizance, and found sufficient sureties for his appearance at the next court of oyer and terminer or general gaol delivery (or court of General or Quarter Sessions of the Peace), to be holden in and for the county of to answer our Sovereign Lady the Queen, for that (c., as in the commitment), for which he was taken and committed to your said common gaol: These are therefore to command you, in Her Majesty's name, that if the said A. B. remains in your custody in the said common gaol for " the said cause, and for no other, you shall forthwith suffer him to go at large. Given under our hands and seals, this in the year at day of in the county aforesaid. " J. S., [SEAL.] J. N., [SEAL.] J. P., (Name of county.) DD.-(Section 607.) GAOLER'S RECEIPT TO THE CONSTABLE FOR THE PRISONER. 2 I hereby certify that I have received from W. T., constable, of the county of the body of A. B., together with a warrant under the hand and seal of J. S., Esquire, justice of the peace for the said county of and that the said A. B. was sober, (or as the " case may be), at the time he was delivered into my custody. P. K., Keeper of the common gaol of the said county. PART XLVI. INDICTMENTS. "The draft Code next deals with the subject of indictments, the object being to reduce them to what is really necessary for the purposes of justice. The law at present, is in the form of objectionable written rules, qualified by several wide exceptions, which modify some of their defects. These general rules require the greatest minuteness in many matters, which need not be referred to here. Two rules, however, may be specially mentioned; 1st. Indictments must not be double and cannot be in the alternative; each count must charge one offence and no more : 2nd. All material averments must be proved as laid. Although these rules have been considerably relaxed in practice, the effect of them is that indictments run to a most inordinate length, and become at once so long and so intricate that it is hardly possible to understand them, and, that practically no one reads them but the counsel who draw and the clerks who copy them. The method employed is to take a section of an Act of Parliament and draw a series of counts, each charging one of the offences which the section creates; and as a single section often creates many offences hardly differing from each other, except by very slight shades of meaning, counts are inordinately multiplied in this manner. For instance, in R. v. Sillem, (1) an information, (which might have been an indictment), charged certain persons, in substance, with having equipped for the Confederate States, then at war with the United States, a ship called the "Alexandra." The information was framed upon 59 Geo. 3 c. 69, and contained 95 counts. The first count charged an equipping with intent that the ship should be employed by certain foreign states, styling themselves the Confederate States, with intent to cruise against the Republic of the United States. The second count, instead of the Republic of the United States, mentioned the citizens of the Republic of the United States. The third count omitted all mention of the Confederate States, and called the United States the Republic of, &c. The fourth count was like the third, with the exception of returning to the expression "citizens," &c. After giving various names to the United States and Confederate States in the first eight counts, eight other counts were added substituting "furnish" for equip." Eight more substituted "fit out" for "furnish." In short, the indictment contained a number of counts obtained by combining every operative verb of the section on which it was founded with all the other operative words. 6 The excessive stringency of the rules on the subject of indictments has been greatly, though somewhat capriciously, relaxed by a variety of statutes, of which 14 and 15 Vict., c. 100 is perhaps the most extensive. By their provisions the necessity for excessive particularity is done away with, in some cases, but is left untouched in others. Thus, for instance, it is sufficient in an indictment for murder to charge that A wilfully, feloniously, and of his malice aforethought did kill and murder B., instead of setting out, as was formerly necessary, the precise manner in which the murder was committed. If the charge is not murder but obtaining goods by false pretences, the particular false pretence used must be stated, and must be proved as laid, and a proper averment that it was false to the knowledge of the accused must be introduced. It is quite impossible to assign any reason why indictments for murder should be drawn on one principle, and indictments for false pretences on another. The explanation is that the inconvenience of the principle, which used to apply to both cases, happened to attract notice in the one case, and to escape notice in the other. We propose to deal with this matter, not by making any further exceptions to the rules now in force as to indictments, but by altering the rule itself, and substituting for it the rule stated in section 482, the most important part of which is in these words: (C Every count of an indictment shall contain and shall be sufficient if it contains in substance a statement that the accused has committed some offence therein specified. Such statement may be made in (1) R. v. Sillem, 2 H. & C. 431. |