COUNSEL AND JUDGE.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIV, Issue 277, 20 November 1913, Page 7

COUNSEL AND JUDGE.

(To the Editor.) Sir,—With regard to your report of the proceedings in the Supreme Court, Auckland, on Tuesday in reference to a certain prisoner awaiting trial at the present criminal sessions, I deem it only right that I should be allowed to state that his Honor Mr. Justice Edwards' remarks to which 1 wae not allowed by the judge, to reply are. not only in toy opinion, but also in the opinion of every other person who is aware of the actual facts, entirely unjustified. I had been approached by this prisoner to appear in h-is defence. His friends and relatives did not. assist him as he

expected, and 1 was in consequence oblifred to discard my brief. 1 was not in the position definitely to dg so until Monday morning, a≤ 1 could not tell definitely until then whether his friends or relatives would assist him. I do not desire now to say anything to his prejudice, as also 1 did not desire to do so in the open Court and in the hearing of the very jurors who would have to try his case. I may add that counsel was assigned In* the jud<je to defend this prisoner, and that this counsel after perusing the brief declined to undertake the case, he being just as much entitled to a-ct thus as I was. These matters are no concern of the judge, but still at his request this othpr counsel and myself attended on Tuesday morninpr at the Supreme. Court. My attendance was a courtesy to the Court, which in ray opinion the judge could not have compelled mc to extend to him. but which at the present juncture of affaire 1 deemed it the. better so to extend ill order to avoid if possible any repetition or continuance of some of those unpleasantnesses and. injustice!! which have been experienced in the past. The other counsel was waiting with mc in the Court, and "was summoned to the judge's private room and did not reappear in the Court. This fact, of which the public inside as well as outside the Court were not informed, is significant, particularly coupled with the fart that I was, as 1 felt bound to be in fairness both to my profession and the public, one of the earliest signatories to the resolution almost unanimously passed by tlic Auckland Law Society at the meeting held some weeks a?o. the nature of which resolution is sufficiently familiar to the public who have read the report of the proceedings in the case of the Attorney(•enep.il v. Odd-is and Blomfipld. The suggestion made by the judge that 1 hail told him a falsehood, which by no possibility could work any advantage to my I or anybody else, I repudiate, with us much ve.hemenrc as that with which it was flung at mc. A lute eminent counsel w nen being violently attacked by a judjif. and taking this attack impert.urba.bly. was ordered not to sit "like a jrraven. image." Another co"n>cl was ordered not to cough. I have been ordered not to smile, 1 have been also ordered, as many another conned before mc. and J myself also on other occasions in the past, to sit silent and to refrain from replying or explaining when being accused, though the facts are not known to the accuser, of conduct unworthy of myself or any other profes*i.ik ,U man. 1 'leave the Fail* to be judged of by the publi.\ who lire fast Wonting also in a position to judge between the senior ocenpant of the Auckland Supreme Court Bench and the legal frateniii> not. on,ly in Auckland but throughout the Dominion.— I am, etc., RICHARD A. SINC.Kit.