was involved in the issue, and the verdict must have turned upon the question of the relative credibility of these two witnesses. Under our system of criminal trials, the jury are the sole judges of the weight of testimony and credibility of witnesses. Under the law the defendant had the unassailable, conceded right to the unbiased judgment of the jury upon the vital question of the credence to be given to Brown’s version of the homicide, without having the question practically determined for the jury, adversely to the defendant, by oblique allusions and argumentative comments from the bench, whereby Brown’s testimony was held up for observation in terms which unfavorably contrasted the character and credibility of Brown with that of Dinan. The court stated, in effect, that Dinan, in legal contemplation, was a man not yet sunk so low as to be beyond reformation, and therefore that it was permissible at least to give the testimony of Dinan the credit due to the testimony of an honest man. No such charitable suggestion was made as to the case of Brown. For purposes of an argumentative contrast to Brown’s disadvantage the court adverted to the elementary doctrine of the text-writers, viz., that the law, in punishing criminals, had a twofold object in view—one object being to protect society, and the other to reform the criminal; and almost in the same breath they were told that Brown was, in the eye of the law beyond reformation, having been sentenced to suffer death. The court said: “The object of the law in convicting men, and making them suffer the death penalty, is to protect society, and for the reason that there is no further need of trying to reform them; that they are so far gone that for the protection of society they should be executed. Hence the law steps in, and says that if they commit certain crimes death shall follow.” The court continues: “I call your attention to that for the purpose of assisting you in weighing the testimony of the man Brown, in determining whether or not the testimony of a man who is convicted of murder—a man who is under sentence of death—is of such a character and of such a kind, as to invite your credit; and, in order to so determine, you may consider whether or not he has shown any signs of obedience to law and order, any signs of penitence, any signs of humiliation, or whether his testimony is
