The Ontario Reports ; Containing Reports of Cases Decided in the Queen's Bench, Chancery, and Common Pleas Divisions of the High Court of Justice for Ontario Volume 25

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1895 edition. Excerpt: ...for seduction should be now interfered with. She also gave evidence upon which, with the other evidence adduced at the trial, they might find, and they did find, that only the offence charged was committed, a conclusion which the grand jury also reached, asappears from their ignoring the one bill and finding the other. There could surely be no valid objection to a charge, that if the jury found upon the whole evidence that the graver ofi'ence was committed, they should find a verdict of not guilty; but if they found that the ofience charged only was committed--if they thought the evidence going beyond that overdrawn and not to be credited--they should find a verdict of guilty. It was a case of one or other or neither crime, both could not have been committed. It can not be that a prisoner is entitled to be acquitted of the crime charged whenever some of the evidence for the Crown discloses a different offence, if there be yet evidence sumcient to support a conviction of the crime charged. The jury may credit or discredit a witness in part or altogether. " The jurors are not bound to believe the evidence of any witness; and they are not bound to believe the whole of the evidence of any witness. They may believe that part of a witness's evidence which makes for the party who calls him, and disbelieve that part of his evidence which makes against the party who calls him, unless there is an express or tacit admission that the whole of his account is to be taken as accurate": The Directors, etc., of the Dublin R. W. Co. v. Slattery, 3 App. Ca.s. 1155, per Lord Blackburn, at p. 1201. If authority be needed to support the conviction in this case, the cases of In we Thompson, 6 H. 85 N. 193, and Wilkinson v. Dutton, 3 B. & S. 821,...