[counterfeit coins, form of treason – treason – capital punishment]

R. v. Ellis

Supreme Court of New South Wales

Burton J., October 1841

Source: Sydney Herald, 15 October 1841

COINING.

Edward Ellis, a prisoner of the Crown, was given in charge to the jury for coining.

            The Attorney-General stated the case for the Crown : the prisoner was undefended.

            The prisoner had been living in July last in the Government Demesne, where he was working in the Government employ. Several moulds, a crucible, and other implements of coining, were found in his hut, and after his apprehension three counterfeit half-crowns, corresponding with the moulds, were discovered upon his person.

            The prisoner a few days before his arrest showed some half-crowns to one of the witnesses for the Crown, and said that the things he had made them with were in the hut.

            Another person, who had been transported for coining, had been for about two years in the same hut in which the prisoner lived, and the prisoner had been only about eight or ten days in the hut before his arrest. The prisoner was a young man; he cross-examined the witnesses with some ingenuity, and appeared to be forward and callous in his demeanour.

            Mr. Justice Burton, in charging the Jury, said, that through some unhappy oversight of the local legislature of this Colony, the crime with which the prisoner was charged being treason, was not brought within the Colonial Act, which gave a power of commutation of sentence in other cases of felony, so that if the prisoner were convicted, neither the Court nor the Governor had power to commute his sentence of death, in case the Attorney General thought proper to pray judgment upon his conviction, and in that event the Governor could only refer the case home.

            The Jury retired for about five minutes, and upon their return to Court found a verdict of Not guilty. The prisoner was remanded to the Barracks, and the Court adjourned till this morning.