STOLEN DIAMOND PENDANT.

Auckland Star, Volume LV, Issue 180, 31 July 1924, Page 7

STOLEN DIAMOND PENDANT.

CHARGE AGAINST JEWELLER. COUKT IMPOSES A FIXE. (By Telegraph.—rress Association.) WELLINGTON, this day. George Arthur Jenness, who was found guilty at the Supreme Court of having wilfully attempted to defeat the. ends of justice in connection with the purchase of a stolen diamond pendant valued at £65, was to-day fined £20. Counsel for accused said prisoner had been guilty of a mistaken sense of his obligation to a woman, who had sold the pendant to him, and had not realised his obligations to the police. His character was excellent, and he had been in business in the city for 27 years. The Crown Prosecutor, Mr. P. S. K. Macassey, in his opening speech, said I that a, servant, Mary Green, employed !by a lady in Marton, stole a ! pendant valued at £li.i, and went to accused's shop to have it valued. She was told it was worth £17. and took a gold watch valued at £10 and the balance in money. Some two njpnths after she tried to repossess herself of the pendant. Accused wrote that she could have the pendant back on payment of £25. To the police he denied all knowledge of the pendant or of Green at first, but later admitted that the pendant had been in his possession. Jenness was .not charged with receiving the pendant, knowing it to have been , stolen, but his conversion of it to his own ; use after the true facts became known ;to him amounted, said Mr. Macassey, to I theft. With regard to tha alleged ' obstruction of justice, as an honest man he should immediately have i handed the pendant over when quesj tioned by the police. The accused had I made false entries in his books in j regard to tbc jewel, which ho had I regained from a party to whom it had I passed, and kept it in his house. Had i not Jenness thought the police in pos- | session of incriminating letter* between ' i Green and himself it was improbable I that the pendant would have been recovered. I