Practical Tests in Evidence.
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PRACTICAL TESTS IN EVIDENCE. By Irving Browne. II. Exhibition of the Human Body. 2. In Criminal Cases. It seems that the defendant in a criminal case may exhibit his body to the jury. Thus in Campbell v. State, 55 Ala. 80, it being a material ques tion whether certain footprints were made by the prisoner, he was permitted by the court to exhibit his naked feet to the jury, that they might see whether he could have made the tracks, and also to walk over the sawdust on the floor of the court-room in front of the jury-box; and his counsel, having measured the tracks, commented on the dif ference between them and those described by the witnesses for the prosecution. The court, commenting on this practical test, cited 1 Hale P. C, 136, where a prisoner charged with rape successfully defended himself " by being permitted to show pri vately to the jury that he had a frightful rupture, which made it impossible he could be guilty." In a recent case in Texas, the defendant being indicted for aggravated assault by biting off a piece of the complainant's ear, the complainant was permitted to exhibit the maimed ear to the jury. In his brief in People v. Kelly, 94 N. Y. 526, Mr. John H. McKinley, complaining that the complainant was permitted to show his maimed hand to the jury, said : " No gaping wound of Cassar can be used in this age to convict the inflictor." But the court held otherwise. The most singular instance of such an ex hibition was that made at a court in Mercer County, Pennsylvania. A young woman named Scott, who was soon to become a mother, appeared before a Mercer County justice of the peace, and swore out a warrant for the arrest of a young man named Blood-
!good on a charge of assault and battery. Bloodgood was arrested. The young woman swore that two weeks previously the prisoner had come to her house, and as she objected to his remaining, he had choked her until she was almost unconscious, and had twisted her left wrist, almost dislocating it. She said the marks of his fingers and thumb were visible on her throat for several days, and her wrist had remained crooked for some time. She had no witnesses of the assault. Bloodgood admitted having been at the young woman's house, but denied the assault. The justice held him, however, for trial. The case came on for trial. The complainant appeared, carrying her three weeks' old baby. She swore to having been assaulted by the prisoner, as she had sworn before the justice of the peace, and that she was the mother of the child in her arms. Her lawyer then offered to show the baby to the jury; after examining it the judge al lowed this, and the prosecuting lawyer took the infant to the jury, and uncovering its throat, revealed to them the distinct marks of four fingers on one side of it, and the plain and unmistakable impression of a thumb on the other. After the remarkable birth-marks had been examined by the jury, the lawyer uncovered the baby's left wrist. It was twisted out of shape and swollen, as if it had been suddenly wrenched. These marks on the throat and the twisted wrist corresponded exactly with the injuries the baby's mother swore, more than a month before it was born, to having received at the hands of the prisoner Bloodgood. After this startling and most extraordinary evidence was presented, the prosecution rested its case. The prisoner was convicted. It has been held however that the prisoner
