Section 277: decision vested exclusively in the judge in a trial with assessors
This was a trial with assessors, and there is an essential difference between trial by a court with the aid of assessors, and trial by a court with a jury. Assessors are merely required to give their opinions to the Judge, who must thereafter pronounce his own verdict whether the accused is guilty or not guilty, irrespective of what opinions the assessors may have expressed. Thus Section 277 of the Criminal Procedure Code provides: “The opinion of each assessor shall be given orally, and shall be recorded in writing by the Court, but the decision shall be vested exclusively in the Judge. Any assessor dissenting from any decision of the Court may have his dissent and the grounds thereof recorded in the minutes.” In a trial by a court with a jury, on the other hand, it is the jury who pronounce the verdict of guilty or not guilty, and the Judge is thereafter required by law merely to record the verdict of the jury, and proceed either to convict or acquit as the case may be in accordance with that verdict. It follows that in a trial by a court with a jury, the Judge is not required to write any judgment stating the reasons for the decision.
It is clear, however, that in a trial by a court with the aid of assessors, where the Judge is required to pronounce his verdict irrespective of what the opinions of the assessors may be, the Judge must write a judgment stating his reasons for whatever conclusion he reaches upon the evidence adduced before him.
Sections 154 and 155: conviction of an offence other than the one charged
The District Magistrate, however, is recorded as finding that these two appellants were “not guilty of stealing, but guilty of fraud by false pretences”. In this the learned Judge of the Divisional Court supported him. (His lordship read Section 39 of the Criminal Code and Section 154 of the Criminal Procedure Code, as reproduced in the headnote, and continued:—) In our opinion, the combined effect of these two provisions is (1) that if upon a charge of stealing it be found that the facts do not support such a charge, but do support a charge of fraud by false pretences, an accused person may be found guilty of such a charge by substitution although it formed no part of the indictment; but (2) that if the facts do support a charge of stealing, it is upon that count, and that count alone, that an accused person must be dealt with and convicted, and if wrongly acquitted upon such a charge the same facts cannot be used in order to convict him on a substituted charge, particularly where it appears (as it does in the instant case) that the ownership of the money was not severed from the person who handed it to the accused by way only of a temporary loan. The same reasoning would apply to Section 155 of the Criminal Procedure Code. A person wrongly acquitted on a charge of false pretences cannot on the same facts be convicted of stealing unless the facts support a charge.
