jury deliberated for 69 minutes. On February 14, 1935 he was convicted (and automatically sentenced to death). On appeal to the Court of Criminal Appeal, his defence team argued that the judge had mis-directed the jury. Lord Justice Avory refused leave to appeal, relying on a passage of Foster's Crown Law (1762):"In every charge of murder, the fact of killing being first proved, all the circumstances of accident, necessity, or infirmity are to be satisfactorily proved by the prisoner, unless they arise out of the evidence produced against him; for the law presumeth the fact to have been founded in malice, until the contrary appeareth. And very right it is, that the law should so presume. The defendant in this instance standeth upon just the same foot that every other defendant doth: the matters tending to justify, excuse, or alleviate, must appear in evidence before he can avail himself of them."The Attorney-General (Sir Thomas Inskip) then gave a fiat (intervention on paper) to allow an appeal to the highest court. The issue brought to that court was whether the statement of law in Foster's Crown Law was correct when it said that if a death occurred, it is presumed to be murder unless proved otherwise. Stating the judgment for a unanimous Court, Viscount Sankey made his famous "Golden thread" speech: "Throughout the web of the English Criminal Law one golden thread is always to be seen that it is the duty of the prosecution to prove the prisoner's guilt subject to... the defence of insanity and subject also to any statutory exception. If, at the end of and on the whole of the case, there is a reasonable doubt, created by the evidence given by either the prosecution or the prisoner... the prosecution has not made out the case and the prisoner is entitled to an acquittal. No matter what the charge or where the trial, the principle that the prosecution must prove the guilt of the prisoner is part of the common law of England and no attempt to whittle it down can be entertained." He spent much time contrasting the position under the criminal law at the time when the decisions relied upon in Foster's Crown Law were handed down, and latest precedent. An accused was not even entitled to be represented in court if charged with a misdemeanour. Moreover it was not until 1898 in the post-Civil