Scottish Court of Session Decisions

Subject_1 JURISDICTION.
Subject_2 DIVISION I.

Nature of Jurisdiction.
Subject_3 SECT. IV.

What cases must be tried by an Inquest.

William Brown and Others
v.
The Procurator-Fiscal of the Sheriff-Court of Edinburgh

Date: 19 March 1783
Case No. No 13.

Jury trial indispensable where the higher crimes are charged, tho' inferior punishments be libelled.

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William Brown and others were indicted before the Sheriff-depute of Edinburgh, for assaulting, wounding, and intending to murder certain persons in the streets of that city, and for masterful theft of some of their wearing apparel; the libel concluding for the same corporal punishment as those specified in the foregoing report. In this case, likewise, sentence was pronounced without the interposition of a jury, and the prisoners appealed to the High Court of Justiciary.

But here the Court, considering the crime charged to be of a higher nature than that which occurred in the former instance, though the punishments sought by the prosecutor in both were equal, unanimously determined, agreeably to the judgment pronounced on the case of Leonardo Piscatori, 17th January 1771, that the trial by jury was indispensable.

Fac. Col. (Appendix.) No 5. p. 8.