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Reports of the Decisions of the Native High Court
Reports of the Decisions of the Native High Court Author:Natal (South Africa) Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ment. See also Roscoe's Criminal Evid., 12th Ed., p. 1905 178. (waller, A.J.: Your great difficulty is, that in 2nd March. this Colony we are not bound by Eng... more »lish practice. In , — c , j i T-s i-ii-i -i i Mbanaatsheni lact, in some cases recently in England, they have adop- v Rex ted the practice out here). It is not necessary that a practice should bo continued simply because it is a practice, if it is a bad one. (boshoff, J.: What do you say to Sec. 72 of the Courts' Act?) Yes, I see that this Court is bound to follow the Supreme Court practice where these rules are silent. Clarence (contra.): The practice followed by the prosecution is that prevailing in the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court has followed the practice of the Cape Supreme Court. Rule 63 of that Court (Tennant's Rules) lays down that several distinct acts may be included in the same indictment, even though the complainants may be different. Personally I cannot say that I like the practice. Under Rule 9 of this Court (Criminal Rules) il is net necessary to give the name of the owner, but I hav'igiwn the names in this case because I considered that it would be less embarrassing to the prisoner. The two acts are so nearly allied in the minds of the witnesses that it would be almost impossible to distinguish between them. Boshoff, J.: The indictment in question is in conformity with the practice of the Supreme Court of this Colony, vide Rex v. Tambileka, alias Jim, alias Charlie, alias Jack, alias Thomas, Durban Circuit, Dec., 1899; jilso the cases of Rex v. Umpikwa, alias Nkama, and Rex v. Gulu. Although we are not bound by the decisions of the Supreme Court, it would ill become us to disturb a practice already established. One can easily conceive of a case where a prisoner would be emb...« less