Whatever Happenened To Molly Bloom? - Plot & Excerpts
NINEIt was not unusual for lay magistrates to regard the laws of evidence as more of a lawyers’ fad than an essential cog in the machinery of justice. In certain rural areas professional rules were looked upon as restrictions, artificial and pettifogging, and no match for sturdy common sense when conflicts in judgement arose.Patrick Mullen was no uneducated lout from the bogs, however. He had trained at the Inner Temple and had been for several terms Chairman of the Dublin Quarter Assizes. The hearing over which he presided early that Friday morning was, for all intents and purposes, conducted on model lines in obedience to every statute on the books and all the latest amendments that came over from Westminster by the boatload.Inferior men might incline against a defendant on grounds of race or creed or even an inability to soar over a five-bar gate in pursuit of a fox. But the prejudice that Patrick Mullen harboured was nothing if not original: namely that the accused had robbed Dublin of a musical star, which, even for a nut like Mullen, was pushing it more than somewhat.
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