Twelve Good Men and Tory

THE jury, in O’Connell’s case, was really what we would now call “fixed.” The recorder (or whoever it was who made up the jury-list before it was handed over to the sheriff) cut out one third of the names, and the effect was to exclude jurors politically attached to O’Connell. The argument of the majority was that a challenge to the array* only obtains for errors made by the sheriff, and that it could not be sustained when the polls were tampered with by persons who prepared them for the sheriff.

Of this subterfuge we may justly say, adopting Lord Denman’s words in his famous judgment in the House of Lords,* when the case was finally decided:

“If it is possible that such a practice as that which has taken place in the present instance should be allowed to pass without a remedy (and no other remedy than that of the challenge to the array has been suggested), trial by jury itself, instead of being a security to persons who are accused, will be a mockery, a delusion, and a snare.”