Sligo Champion - Saturday, June 1, 1895
This report was originally published in English. Machine translations may be available in other languages.
London, Thursday Night. [...] Mr Labouchere, writing on the Wilde case in this week's Truth, says:—"The verdict of the jury was amply justified by the evidence set before it. On the first jury there were, I understand, ten for a verdict of guilty and two for an acquittal. One of the two was a gentleman who, having returned a verdict on a court- martial which he subsequently thought wrong, declared that he never would incur this risk again, and he was consequently impervious to all argument. Wilde and Taylor were tried on a clause in the Criminal Law Amendment Act which I had inserted in order to render it possible for the law to take cognisance of proceedings like theirs. I took the clause mutatis mutandis from the French Code. As I had drafted it the maximum sentence was seven years. The then Home Secretary and Attorney-General, both most experienced men, however, suggested to me that in such cases convictions are always difficult, and that it would be better were the maximum to be two years. Hence the insufficiency of the severest sentence that the law allows, which as Mr Justice Wills observed, is totally inadequate to the offence.
The verdict of the jury was amply justified by the evidence set before it. On the first jury there were, I understand, ten for a verdict of guilty and two for an acquittal. One of the two was a gentleman who, having returned a verdict on a court-martial which he subsequently thought wrong, declared that he never would incur this risk again, and he was consequently impervious to all argument. Wilde and Taylor were tried on a clause in the Criminal Law Amendment Act which I had inserted, in order to render it possible for the law to take cognisance of proceedings like theirs. I took the clause mutatis mutandis from the French code. As I had drafted it, the maximum sentence was seven years. The then Home Secretary and Attorney-General, both most experienced men, however, suggested to me that, in such cases, convictions are always difficult, and that it would be better were the maximum to be two years. Hence the insufficiency of the severest sentence that the law allows, which, as Mr. Justice Wills observed, is totally inadequate to the offence.
"The verdict of the jury was amply justified by the evidence set before it. On the first jury there were, I understand, ten for a verdict of guilty and two for an acquittal. One of the two was a gentleman who, having returned a verdict on a court martial which he subsequently thought wrong, declared that he never would incur this risk again, and he was consequently impervious to all argument. Wilde and Taylor were tried on a clause in the Criminal Law Amendment Act which I had inserted in order to render it possible for the law to take cognisance of proceedings like theirs. I took the clause ‘mutatis mutandis’ from the French Code. As I had crafted it the maximum sentence was seven years. The then Home Secretary and Attorney-General, both most experienced men, however, suggested to me that in such cases convictions are always difficult, and that it would be better were the maximum to be two years. Hence the insufficiency of the severest sentence that the law allows, which, as Mr Justice Wills observed, is totally inadequate to the offence."
The verdict of the jury was amply justified by the evidence set before it. On the first jury there were, I understand, 10 for a verdict of guilty and two for an acquittal. One of the two was a gentleman who, having returned a verdict on a court-martial which he subsequently thought wrong, declared that he never would incur this risk again, and he was consequently impervious to all argument. Wilde and Taylor were tried on a clause in the Criminal Law Amendment Act which I had inserted in order to render it possible for the law to take cognisance of proceedings like theirs. I took the clause mutatis mutandis from the French code. As I had drafted it the maximum sentence was seven years. The then Home Secretary and Attorney-General, both most experienced men, however, suggested to me that in such cases convictions are always difficult, and that it would be better were the maximum to be two years. Hence the insufficiency of the severest sentence that the law allows, which, as Mr. Justice Wills observed, is totally inadequate to the offence.