"
"The Court," said the judge, abruptly, "desires no further
argument."
The counsel for the People resumed his seat. His face lighted up
with triumph. The Court was going to sustain him.
The judge turned and looked down at the jury. He was grave, and
spoke with deliberate emphasis.
"Gentlemen of the jury," he said, "the rule of Lord Hale obtains in
this State and is binding upon me. It is the law as stated by
counsel for the prisoner: that to warrant conviction of murder
there must be direct proof either of the death, as of the finding
and identification of the corpse, or of criminal violence adequate
to produce death, and exerted in such a manner as to account for
the disappearance of the body; and it is only when there is direct
proof of the one that the other can be established by
circumstantial evidence. This is the law, and cannot now be
departed from. I do not presume to explain its wisdom. Chief-
Justice Johnson has observed, in the leading case, that it may have
its probable foundation in the idea that where direct proof is
absent as to both the fact of the death and of criminal violence
capable of producing death, no evidence can rise to the degree of
moral certainty that the individual is dead by criminal
intervention, or even lead by direct inference to this result; and
that, where the fact of death is not certainly ascertained, all
inculpatory circumstantial evidence wants the key necessary for its
satisfactory interpretation, and cannot be depended on to furnish
more than probable results.
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