In many courts the attitude of all parties concerned
seems to be that the defendant will put up a perjured defence
(so far as his own testimony is concerned, at any rate) as a
matter of course, and that this is hardly to be taken against
him.
On the other hand, if a guilty defendant has been so badly
advised as to give his own version of the case before the
magistrate in the first instance, it requires but slight
assiduity on the part of the district attorney to secure, in
the interval between the hearing and the jury trial, ample
evidence to rebut it.
As illustrating merely the fertility and resourcefulness of
some defendants (or perhaps their counsel), the writer recalls
a case which he tried in the year 1902 where the defendant, a
druggist, was charged with manslaughter in having caused the
death of an infant by filling a doctor's prescription for
calomel with morphine. It so happened that two jars
containing standard pills had been standing side by side upon
an adjacent shelf, and, a prescription for morphine having
come in at the same time as that for the calomel, the druggist
had carelessly filled the morphine prescription with calomel,
and the calomel prescription with morphine.
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