Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 2.djvu/59

 NOTES. 41

statute, be stolep. Breaking and entering with intent to steal a dog is, therefore, burglary in Ohio.

The case is interesting reading, on account of the various authorities cited, including poetical citations from Byron, Pope, and Burns, and prose from Modey and the Bible.

Mr. Seymour D. Thompson contributes an interesting article to the ^^ Central Law Journal " on the use of documents to refresh the mem- ory of witnesses.^ The notion contained in this practice is, that it is sufficient if the witness is ^^ able to swear that the memorandum is cor- rect, although he may have forgotten the facts." Therefore it is not material by whom the memorandum is made, or even that it is a copy. Mr. Thompson does not extend this principle so far as to regard the time when it was made as immaterial ; on the contrary, he argues that because the memorandum must have been made at or about the time of the events to which it relates, therefore a witness should not be allowed to refer to his own previous testimony or depositions.

It seems formerly to have been thought that the witness could not use memoranda, unless he had some independent recollections which merely needed a litde revivifying ; but that idea has been broadened to the rule quoted above. A witness may now refer to a memorandum of events of which he has no positive recollection, provided he will swear diat it is an accurate record. In that case, Mr. Thompson thinks, the document itself may be given to the jury, though he admits a difficulty in finding any settled rule on the point.

The article contains many references to authorities.

In the January ** Law Quarterly Review " Mr. Herbert Stephen dis- cusses the recent New Zealand case of Reg. v. Hall^ which is chiefly valuable in the specific limitation that it sets upon the doctrine of Reg. v. Geering^ and other later cases, that, where it is a question whether a given act was accidental or intentional, evidence is admissible that such act was one of a series of circumstances in each of which the defendant was similarly concerned.

In Reg. V. Hall the defendant was indicted for the murder by poison- ing of one Cain, his wife's step-father. On the trial evidence was offered that the defendant had subsequendy attempted to poison his wife, in order to show that the administration of poison to Cain was not acci- dental. The court held that the evidence was not admissible, because there was not sufficient prior evidence that the defendant was the person who administered the poison to Cain, and because the evidence went less to show that the administration was intentional than it did to show that Hall was the person who administered it. The court held, says Mr. Stephen, that ** evidence of this class could only be admitted on account of its relevancy to the question of accident or intention, when there was evidence aliunde fixing the prisoner with the administra- tion."

In other words, the court limits the doctrine of Reg. v. Geering to cases where the fact that the prisoner committed the act in question

> Memoraoda to Refreah Recollection of Witneeeet. The Cent. L. Toor. vol. a6, no. 13, p. 3x1. no- «3» p. 7S. • 18 L. J. M. C. 215.
 * ETidence in Criminal Caees of Similar but Unconnected Act*. The Law Quarterly Reriew, vol. it.