7 July 1804

Procedure & Evidence

Evils causes

3d order

'.1 1. Wrongful decision to plff

III. Factitious causes positive: examples

1. Laws requiring a decision adverse to the demandant's side on points or grounds foreign to the merits of the cause v. infrà. (a)

2. Arrangements necessitating precipitation by assigning fixed and narrow limits to the term employed in the exhibiting, discussing and considering /exhibition, discussion and consideration/ of the evidence.

3. In penal cases (whether purely penal or mixt) laws giving to a known and determinate person or set of persons the power of exempting the defendant from punishment or the obligation of rendering satisfaction or both without reason assigned, under /----/ the name of pardon. (b)

4. In the like cases, laws giving to an unknown and indeterminate set of men the granting or exempting /to/ the defendant from the same obligations, and without reason assigned in an indirect way: viz: by creating in the course of the steps or instruments of procedure, through negligence or design, supposed errors, to which the same effect is annexed: and so in likewise in non-penal cases.

5. Laws excluding on insufficient grounds, this or that species of evidence.

(a) In long note

(b) To which in English law may be added the power of stopping prosecution by a Noli prosequi.