It is a very different thing when the Minister brings in here a Bill which tries to curb in every possible way all the rights and facilities that might enable a prisoner to get a fair trial. The Minister mentioned other countries where there were certain alterations in the jury system. I do not think he mentioned any country where the jury panel is secret. In that respect, apparently, the Twenty-six Counties are going to show the way. They are going to show the way that the sense of justice and fair play, the sense of safeguards for the prisoner and the sense of the maxim that every man is presumed innocent until he is found guilty—that all those are to be flung away, and that the prisoner is going to go into the dock with a definite handicap against him, so that, unless some miracle happens, he is going to go to jail or even to suffer the extreme penalty if the charge is on the capital offence.
Another section in the Bill that the Minister tried to justify was Section 5 which deals with the majority verdict. If we leave out this bluff about conspiracy, if we leave that out of the discussion for the moment, on what grounds can the Minister for Justice justify the introduction of such a section? When the Courts of Justice Act was being introduced and passed through this House, passed, I believe, on the recommendation of a Committee, an Act that was carefully drafted and carefully considered, that Committee and this House were very careful to exclude criminal trials from the effect of the majority verdict. To anybody the reason was quite obvious, that a prisoner, according to the system of jurisprudence and according to every other authority, has always been recognised as being entitled to any reasonable doubt. As was pointed out here before, if three persons on the jury disagree with the verdict of the other nine, is there not a reasonable doubt there, since previously it was recognised here that even if one disagreed there was a disagreement of the jury and the prisoner might be brought up again? The usual practice, I believe, after three disagreements is to enter a nolle prosequi. Now the Minister seeks to introduce this section and to make the majority verdict the verdict—that is, the majority of nine to three. Surely it is evident to anyone that if there are three reasonable men, three men who get on that jury after all the packing and the curtailed methods that have been adopted or even visualised in this Bill, in the interests of the State, three people approved of by the State prosecutor in favour of an acquittal, there is a reasonable doubt there? Is a man to be hanged where a reasonable doubt exists in the minds of three people? It will be justified on the one ground of expediency, the one ground that it is going to be a safeguard for jurors. Is it a safeguard for jurors? Is it not obvious to anyone that if there is any feeling whatever against a particular verdict that the three men on that jury who have held the view that the prisoner was not guilty, are going to advertise it and to blazen it all over the country that they, at any rate, disagreed with the verdict? If three disagree, must it not have been the other nine that found the prisoner guilty? Will those people keep it secret?
Will there not be somebody in the court or around the court, or in the locality from which those jurors are drawn, that will know and say that it was certain people who were responsible for a certain verdict? Is that a protection to jurors? Is it intended to be a protection for jurors? It was quite plain, in the other instance, that if twelve were required to bring in a verdict of guilty, and if there was a verdict of guilty, that then the twelve jurors found the prisoner guilty. This will have the same effect. If there is a feeling that a wrong verdict has been arrived at, you will have people who disagreed from that circulating it to everybody in justification of their own action. There is no penalty provided to prevent them doing so. The Bill, as I say, is not intended for the protection of jurors. It is intended merely as a political propagandist method, and nothing else.
Section 6 deals in a very roundabout and a very ambiguous and vague way, with what is now constituted an offence—non-recognition of the court. "Any act or omission"—I do not know, and it has not been so far defined to the House in what way an omission can be construed as contempt of court. Apart from that, passive resistance has always been recognised as a constitutional and ethical method to which people were entitled to resort, and it has been recognised in this country. It has been recognised everywhere, and here again the Free State must lead the way in constituting as an offence what other nations have not done so far. If that is what they lead the way in it is not much of an advertisement for them outside this country. Passive resistance is a method, and the only method in many cases, that is left to people to try to secure some justice, or some rights, where the law may be immoral, or may become immoral by maladministration, where there is a system of law that in its ordinary application may be fair but in its maladministration may become very unfair.
What method is left to prevent an unfortunate prisoner being tried by a packed jury, by a Star Chamber, behind closed doors, with the court cleared, and the advice and opinion of the Civic Guards pressed, and in certain cases excluded, with no way of getting the light of publicity which we are told is the security of jurisprudence and the administration of the law—as I quoted from Lord Shaw for the Minister? What method is left to the unfortunate prisoner, handicapped, manacled and shackled in that way, except a resort to the method of passive resistance? I believe that when this Bill is in operation, and has been working for some little time, and when it is obvious that passive resistance is the only method which can be used against the ill-usage to which it may be brought, I believe and sincerely hope that there will be men in the country who will resort to that method of passive resistance as the only method open to them to try and break down the administration of laws that have turned out immoral, and that in their conception were immoral. It is the only method that will be open to people in that position, and as this Bill is more and more administered it will be followed more and more.
There is one other matter to which I want to refer. The Minister here, last evening, referred to the Court of Criminal Appeal as being a safeguard. When I stated that the court had not gone into facts in certain cases the Minister was shocked at the time. On that matter, as the Minister is aware, in civil cases, although the courts have the power to go into facts, it is only in very few cases they have done so. I refer the Minister to a decision in the Kerry case three or four weeks ago, where the Chief Justice in the Court of Criminal Appeal said quite definitely they were not to go into certain facts. The Court of Criminal Appeal is not, as the Minister is aware, a court of re-hearing. If the judges administering the law as they find it have come to the conclusion they are not entitled to go into all the facts of the case, what safeguard is the Court of Criminal Appeal?