A charge of murder was brought against him, and a commission was issued to try it. The case came on at the Old Bailey, in London, before Baron Burland, on 11 December 1774. Roche's counsel declined to rely on the former acquittal at the Cape of Good Hope, and the case was again gone through. The fact of the killing was undisputed, but from the peculiar nature of the proceedings, there could not be, as in a common indictment for murder, a conviction for manslaughter; and the judge directed the jury, if they did not believe the killing to be malicious and deliberate, absolutely to acquit the prisoner. The jury brought in a verdict of acquittal.