Reports of Cases Decided in the Supreme Court and Other Courts of Ceylon Volume 3

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1901 Excerpt: ... proved by the production of such treatises if the author is dead, or cannot be found, or has become incapable of giving evidence, or cannot be called as a witness without an amount of delay or expense which the Court regards as unreasonable. The sense of these two provisions induces me to think that if the learned Counsel in this case had in a regular manner produced the book to the attention of the Court in the course of the case for the prosecution, or by way of evidence, or had put the passages he desired to quote to the medical witness while he was in the box, or in any other way had done what, in the meaning of the Ordinance, would amount to production, he would have been in order. But the attitude taken up by him was this--that he had a right in the course of his speech simply to open a book of the scientific description intended by the Evidence Ordinance, and read therefrom such passages to thejury as appeared to him proper, having reference of course to the subject in hand. I think his position was not sound--that he could not do so, that he had practically intimated to the Court that he intended to adduce no evidence, and that, therefore, he was not strictly in a position even to produce the book at that stage without the permission of the Court. I think the learned Counsel was wrong, and the ruling of the Judge was right. We thought, however, that since this case involved a charge of murder, we should look at the passages which Counsel intended to read. What we might have done if we had found that those passages ought to have affected the verdict of the jury it is not necessary to say, because on looking at the passages--they are to be found in the edition of 1883, vol. 2 pp. 566 to 577--and reading the evidence in the case, I come to the conclusi...