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unreviewable for the first 13 years of his judicial career, made Begbie a
somewhat autocratic and unorthodox judge. Not necessarily a “hanging
judge”, but sometimes, no doubt, a “haranguing judge”.40 To cite only one
example, he told a jury in 1862 that they were “a pack of Dalles horse
thieves” and he would enjoy seeing “each and everyone” of them hanged for
convicting a murderer of manslaughter only.41 Definitely over the top, but
he was speaking to the (primarily American) gallery. We also need to be
careful when assessing the occasions on which he reprimanded juries or
even refused to accept a jury verdict. Begbie was a judge when almost all
civil and serious criminal cases were jury trials, and there was no court of
appeal. As a result, trial judges could and did refuse to accept a jury verdict
where it clearly contradicted the evidence. Today, there are appeal courts
to overturn jury verdicts in appropriate cases.42
Begbie was also quite capable of recommending clemency for Indigenous
prisoners convicted of capital offences and of overturning guilty pleas if he
concluded that the process had been unfair. For example, in 1889, only two
years before sending Greer’s jury back to reconsider their verdict, he had
ruled in an early potlatch law prosecution that the law was hopelessly
vague. It would be an abuse of justice, he said, to take advantage of a guilty
plea from a Kwakwaka’wakw man “who speaks no word of English, and
allege that he has pleaded guilty to an offence, the facts constituting which
we should ourselves be unable to set forth”.43
But let’s get back to Greer. The Colonist and no doubt a significant portion
of the settler population approved of the “kind-hearted” jury’s original verdict
and saw Greer as an “old timer” down on his luck. So, presumably, did
the founders of Sam Greer Place, who a century later saw Greer as “somebody
who fought for housing rights”. Begbie would have been appalled by
the notion that Greer was a housing rights advocate. Nor would he accept a
verdict contradicted by the evidence. He also had little sympathy for a jury
that stood silent when he asked them why they persisted in recommending
mercy for a man like Greer. Begbie wanted to know why. He wanted to
know why because, when he looked at Greer, he did not see what they saw.
He saw the worst sort of old-timer: a fraudster and a bully who regularly
abused and cheated others; who had shot a deputy sheriff; and who, six
years earlier, had lied, repeatedly, under oath about forging Indigenous signatures
and had nonetheless been acquitted by a jury. As he said on one
occasion, Greer was “one of the worst men I ever met”.44
This assessment was based on more than his exposure to the man in
courtrooms and at the commission of inquiry. Greer had lived in Chilliwack
in the late 1860s and 1870s, and in spite of his reputation as “a quarrelsome