Richmond Enquirer

CRIMINAL LAW.

It seems, that a Jury have been kept together in this city near four weeks, without any prospect of their agreeing upon a verdict. They were impanelled, on the first week of the session of the circuit court for this county, to try a prisoner for stabbing. His counsel took the ground of self-defence—the jury were, however, hung—and it is presumed no verdict is now to be expected. Mean time the jury are ordered to be kept together ; and will ostensibly remain so until the adjournment of the court. The rule in a civil case appears to be different from what it is in a criminal one; in the former a juryman may be withdrawn, and the case laid over ; but in a capital case, however anxious the parties may be to withdraw a juryman and waive all exceptions to such proceeding, the common law does not admit of any such relaxation. Is this correct? Is it not time to " correct the procedure" by a written law? Lay the facts and the law as clearly as you can before the Jury ; but if they cannot agree upon a verdict, why aim to force them into a compromise of their principles by the prospect of a protracted confinement? The time has gone by when jurymen were starved into a verdict. or trundled about with the Judge through his circuit—is it not high time to abolish the remaining branch of this absurd rule