Lord Roche:-

This is an appeal by special leave from a verdict and sentence given and passed in the Supreme Court of the Island of Ceylon on 14th June 1934. The appellant was charged with having murdered his wife on 15th October 1933, and after a trial lasting 21 days he was found guilty by a majority of five to two of the jury, one of the five in the majority recommending him to mercy. Sentence of death was passed but this sentence was commuted to one of rigorous imprisonment for life.

The main ground of the appeal is that on the evidence a verdict of guilty could not properly or safely be found and that the jury ought to have been so directed, and that in these circumstances such grave injustice had been done as to require the interference of His Majesty. The appellant also complained of certain specific matters in the conduct of the trial as causing or contributing to the miscarriage of justice. Such matters were: that a very large amount of hearsay evidence was admitted and was used as evidence of fact; that the learned Judge misconstrued S. 106 of the Ceylon Ordinance No. 14 of 1895 relating to the law of evidence and in consequence gave an erroneous direction to the jury as to