COUNSEL ATTACKS POLICE.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 102, 2 May 1929, Page 22

COUNSEL ATTACKS POLICE.

"SPITEFUL PROSECUTION." GIRL ACQUITTED BY JURY. (By Telegraph.—Own Correspondent.) DUNEDIN, this day. When defending Myrtle Eliza Duncan, who was charged in the Supreme Court with illegally permitting an instrument to be used on her her counsel, Mr. A. C. Hanlon, mode an attack on the police. "Looking at tiio circumstances of the case," he said, "it is perfectly plain that the prosecution would never have been lodged if the police had been able to obtain evidence from the girl to convict another person on a charge of using an instrument upon her. "This is a spiteful and venomous prosecution, brought on because the girl would not swear up to the briefs held by the police in the other case. "We must (not allow prosecutions against people who don't do what the pplice want them to do," said Mr. Hanlon. "This is the procedure that is to be deprecated, and it would be a bad thing for the law of New Zealand if it i 3 allowed to go on. The prosecution is based on a statement taken from the girl by the police' when they had, her under their thumb, and they squeezed question after question out of her. The girl was never warned that if she made the statement she might be incriminating herself, and that it might be used against her. Can there be anything more repugnant to your sense of justice than proceedings such as, these?" Mr. Justice Smith, in summing up, remarked that the rule was that when the police "had decided to arrest a person no statement could be taken without the person interrogated being warned. The propriety of the questioning did not enter into this case. The sole question was whether an operation had been carried out. The girl was found not guilty.