Why Not “Examining” Justices?
| Date | 01 March 1964 |
| Author | Janus |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X6403700305 |
| Published date | 01 March 1964 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
JANUS
Astudent
of
police history looks at a topic
of
current interest.
"
Janus"
is a serving police officer.
WHY
NOT
~~
EXAMINING"
JUSTICES?
Lord Shawcross has said that
our
present systems of interrogation
of suspects
of
crime are unsatisfactory because they are too favourable
to the suspect. The Judges' Rules are, of course, partly to blame for
this.
He suggested that a remedy might be found in adopting the
continental system
of
examining justices. Protests against any
such step are naturally to be expected, most of all from those ignorant
of
the real facts of the position today, but there is nothing revolu-
tionary in the proposal: it simply means returning to our own older
practice. Until the rise of modern policing in this country, which
took place between 1829 and 1856, magistrates were in effect chiefs
of
police and detectives as well as Judges. They were police authori-
ties, too, but that is beside the point.
Magistrate-Detectives
Some eighteenth-century stories may illustrate my point. We are
told, for instance, that Justice Welch, the Saunders Welch who, as
High Constable of Holborn, had been Henry Fielding's right-hand
man in the formative days of the Bow Street force which preceded
the C.LD., had an excellent grasp
of
the dual nature of his office.
Hearing that a much-wanted criminal was hiding in a first-floor
room
of
a certain house, Welch hired a tall carriage and told the driver
to stop outside the place in question. He climbed on the
roof
of the
vehicle, surprised the wanted man in bed, hauled him through the
window, half-naked and half-asleep, and conveyed him to his court.
There, as Justice Welch, he "
examined"
the man and committed
him for trial.
Blind Sir John Fielding was another magistrate who proved
a good detective, often accompanying his Runners to the scene
of
the crime, where he would question witnesses and suspects and
direct the "
police"
operations. Earlier still, the first of the really
salient Bow Street justices, Sir Thomas de Veil, had set a precedent
for active intervention in criminal investigation. De Veil seems to
have fancied himself in the role
of
detective, for on several occasions
he was called to the provinces to inquire into crimes
of
great import-
ance. The most diligent and forceful
of
the J.P.'s
of
his day, he broke
the ground that the Fieldings were to sow to such good effect.
The story runs that once, when interrogating a man suspected
of stealing silver plate from a coffee house, he seemed to lose all
us March 1964
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