Read Trial of Oscar Slater

Trial of Oscar Slater

William Roughead

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Description:Oscar Joseph Slater (8 January 1872 - 31 January 1948) was a victim of miscarriage of justice. He was born Oscar Leschziner in Oppeln, Upper Silesia, Germany to a Jewish family. Around 1893, to evade military service, he moved to London where he worked as a bookmaker using various names, including Anderson, before settling on Slater for official purposes. He was prosecuted for malicious wounding in 1896 and assault in 1897 but was acquitted in both cases.At his trial, defence witnesses provided Slater with an alibi and confirmed that he had announced his visit to America long before the murder. He was convicted by a majority of nine to six (five ‘not proven’ and one ‘not guilty’). In May 1909 he was sentenced to death, the execution to take place before the end of the month. However, the trial judge, Lord Guthrie organised a petition, signed by 20,000 people and the secretary for Scotland, Lord Pentland, issued a conditional pardon and commuted the sentence to life imprisonment.Slater was to serve nineteen years at Peterhead Prison. The following year Scottish lawyer and amateur criminologist, William Roughead, published his Trial of Oscar Slater highlighting flaws in the prosecution. The circumstantial evidence against Slater included his ‘flight from justice’; while the Jury had been made aware of his entire past life; the identification evidence was fleeting and otherwise unreliable, prejudiced, tainted, or coached. In particular Slater was conspicuously contrasted with nine off-duty policemen in his identification parade.Under pressure from Detective Trench, a prison doctor and a Glasgow lawyer named David Cook the then Scottish Secretary McKinnon Wood launched a secret enquiry in 1914. However this was a "farce" and "Gilbertian" and Trench was sacked and then framed for reset by the Glasgow Police. Indeed the case remains the worst miscarriage of justice in Scottish legal history with several senior police officers (Stevenson, Orr, Ord), John Neil Hart, the Procurator Fiscal, and several Liberal Lord Advocates disgracing themselves. Even Lord Guthrie and politicians actively colluding to retain the conviction did not escape humiliation.Slater was released in 1928 with £6,000 compensation when pressure from the Conservative Secretary of State, Labour opposition politicians including Ramsay MacDonald, Arthur Conan Doyle and several journalists lead to a new act and Court of Appeal for Scotland.Those responsible for Miss Gilchrist's murder were never brought to justice but the crime was almost certainly the joint enterprise of two or three male relatives (including a doctor/academic and a lawyer who were protected by legal and political connections).We have made it easy for you to find a PDF Ebooks without any digging. And by having access to our ebooks online or by storing it on your computer, you have convenient answers with Trial of Oscar Slater. To get started finding Trial of Oscar Slater, you are right to find our website which has a comprehensive collection of manuals listed.
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ISBN: 1443740071

Description: Oscar Joseph Slater (8 January 1872 - 31 January 1948) was a victim of miscarriage of justice. He was born Oscar Leschziner in Oppeln, Upper Silesia, Germany to a Jewish family. Around 1893, to evade military service, he moved to London where he worked as a bookmaker using various names, including Anderson, before settling on Slater for official purposes. He was prosecuted for malicious wounding in 1896 and assault in 1897 but was acquitted in both cases.At his trial, defence witnesses provided Slater with an alibi and confirmed that he had announced his visit to America long before the murder. He was convicted by a majority of nine to six (five ‘not proven’ and one ‘not guilty’). In May 1909 he was sentenced to death, the execution to take place before the end of the month. However, the trial judge, Lord Guthrie organised a petition, signed by 20,000 people and the secretary for Scotland, Lord Pentland, issued a conditional pardon and commuted the sentence to life imprisonment.Slater was to serve nineteen years at Peterhead Prison. The following year Scottish lawyer and amateur criminologist, William Roughead, published his Trial of Oscar Slater highlighting flaws in the prosecution. The circumstantial evidence against Slater included his ‘flight from justice’; while the Jury had been made aware of his entire past life; the identification evidence was fleeting and otherwise unreliable, prejudiced, tainted, or coached. In particular Slater was conspicuously contrasted with nine off-duty policemen in his identification parade.Under pressure from Detective Trench, a prison doctor and a Glasgow lawyer named David Cook the then Scottish Secretary McKinnon Wood launched a secret enquiry in 1914. However this was a "farce" and "Gilbertian" and Trench was sacked and then framed for reset by the Glasgow Police. Indeed the case remains the worst miscarriage of justice in Scottish legal history with several senior police officers (Stevenson, Orr, Ord), John Neil Hart, the Procurator Fiscal, and several Liberal Lord Advocates disgracing themselves. Even Lord Guthrie and politicians actively colluding to retain the conviction did not escape humiliation.Slater was released in 1928 with £6,000 compensation when pressure from the Conservative Secretary of State, Labour opposition politicians including Ramsay MacDonald, Arthur Conan Doyle and several journalists lead to a new act and Court of Appeal for Scotland.Those responsible for Miss Gilchrist's murder were never brought to justice but the crime was almost certainly the joint enterprise of two or three male relatives (including a doctor/academic and a lawyer who were protected by legal and political connections).We have made it easy for you to find a PDF Ebooks without any digging. And by having access to our ebooks online or by storing it on your computer, you have convenient answers with Trial of Oscar Slater. To get started finding Trial of Oscar Slater, you are right to find our website which has a comprehensive collection of manuals listed.
Our library is the biggest of these that have literally hundreds of thousands of different products represented.

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Trial of Oscar Slater

Trial of Oscar Slater

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