Page:Trials of the Slave Traders Samo, Peters and Tufft (1813).pdf/25

 were urged in proper time and place, they would be minutely investigated. It is the duty of the Judge to preserve the legal rights of the prisoner.

The Jury, after a short consultation, returned a verdict of.

On the 9th of April, was tried for the same offence, and acquitted by the Jury.

On the 10th, the prisoner Samo, being brought up for sentence, his counsel moved the Court on a point of law, in arrest of judgment, of which cursory notice has already been taken. Mr. H*****s, Samo's counsel, said, that, with due submission, be must again beg leave to address the Court; that in indictments the books clearly laid it down, that they should state a certain day on which the offence had been committed; now the indictment against Samo, the prisoner, takes in several months, without specifying a particular day; therefore this latitude, in point of time, must be considered as fatal to the indictment, from the opinion of the highest legal authorities. The indictment must be considered as having a flaw in it, and be quashed accordingly. These observations, the prisoner's counsel thought, could not fail to have weight on the minds of the Court in behalf of the prisoner, especially when it was remembered that Samo was apprehended at the Isle de Loss, a place out of the jurisdiction of this Court. The prisoner's counsel said he would leave the observation with the Court, and move in arrest of judgment on another ground. The prisoner was not, he said, an English subject, and therefore was not amenable to the British laws; he was a subject of Holland, and on that account was not obliged to observe the acts made in England for the abolition of the slave trade, and could not be tried legally under the 51st of George III., chap. 23., under