JUSTICES OF GAOL-DELIVERY, those commissioned to hear and determine causes appertaining to such as for any offence are cast into prison. Justices of gaol-delivery are empowered by the common law to proceed upon indictments of felony, trespass, &c. and to order execution or reprieve; and they have power to discharge such prisoners as upon their trials shall be acquitted; also all such against whom, on proclamation made, no evidence appears to indict; which justices of oyer and terminer, &c. may not do. 2 Hawk. 24, 25. But these justices having nothing to do with any person not in the custody of the prison, except in some special cases; as if some of the accomplices to a felony may be in such prison and some of them out of it, the justices may receive an appeal against those who are out of the prison as well as those who are in it; which appeal, after the trial of such prisoners, shall be removed into B. R. and process issue from them against the rest. But if those out of prison be omitted in the appeal, they can never be put into any other; because there can be but one appeal for the felony. In this way the gaols are cleared, and all offenders tried, punished, or delivered, in every year.—Their commission is turned over to the justices of assize.