EFFECT OF VERDICT.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 61, Issue 186, 21 May 1941, Page 7

EFFECT OF VERDICT.

RULING OF CHIEF JUSTICE, (P.A.) WELLINGTON, May 20. The legal effect of a verdict of a jury in finding a man guilty “on his own admission,” but recommending him to leniency because “we fool he did not have wilful criminal intent,” was argued before the Chief Justice (Sir Michael Myers) to-day, counsel summitting that the verdict was one of not guilty. His Honor expressed the, opinion that if he did not have wilful criminal intent the jury should not have found him guilty. He thought the safer course was to interpret the verdict as ono of not guilty. He did so with hesitation, but it was not a case, he said, where any good object was to be gained by carrying the matter further. If there were previous convictions or the man was of bad or indifferent character, lie might have looked, at the matter more closely. The case was that of Jack Norman Eager, a stable hand, who was charged with stealing a watch, chain, and pendant which he admitted finding, and, knowing whose they were, he had given the pendant away.