The practical conclusion of the criminal trial is arrived at in
the third stage, that of the decision on the evidence.
So far as we are concerned, the criminal adjudication has the
simple quality of a scientific inquiry, subjective and objective,
in regard to the accused as a possible criminal, and in relation
to the deed of which he is alleged to be the author. We naturally
therefore require in the judge certain scientific
knowledge, and not merely the intuition of common sense.
But as the consultation of the jury, by reason of its inseparable
political aspect, must take place in private, we can only insist
on the fundamental reform of the judicial organisation, which
alone can realise the scientific principle of criminal
adjudication. It was Garofalo who, in the earlier days of the
positive school, urged that civil and criminal judges ought to be
wholly distinct, and that the latter ought to be versed in
anthropology, statistics, and criminal sociology, rather than in
Roman law, legal history, and the like, which throw no light on
the judgment of the criminal.
Learned jurists, proficient in the civil law, are least fit to
make a criminal judge, accustomed as they are by their studies to
abstractions of humanity, looking solely to the juridical
bearings, inasmuch as civil law is mostly ignorant of all that
concerns the physical and moral nature of individuals.
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