NOT EVIDENCE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 259, 1 November 1932, Page 5

NOT EVIDENCE.

BOY'S STATEMENT TO POLICE. QUESTION OF ADMISSIBILITY. When the jury returned a verdict of not guilty at the Supreme Court yesterday in the case of Heta Fred Gardner, who was charged with the murder of George Crewe, at ituatangata, a written judgment, prepared by Mr. Justice Smith at the conclusion of the first trial was released. His Honor said that in his opinion the statement could not be regarded as a voluntary confession. It was clearly established by the law that no statement by an accused person was admissible as evidence against him unless it was shown by the prosecution to have been a voluntary statement. "In my opinion," said his Honor, "that has not" been shown. The accused boy in May last was aged 15 years and seven months. He is a Maori, and is described by the medical experts ae feeble-minded. Hβ has the mentality of a child of nine or ten."

No threat in the ordinary sense of the word appeared to have been made during the examination of the accused by Inspector O'Hara and Detective-Sergeant Robinson, or by Constables Beasley and McKie, but his Honor's view was that the arrival of the four men in the boy's bedroom, the handcuffing of the boy and the taking of him to the police station, where he was surrounded by none but police officials, and the exertion there of pressure to tell the details of a story, amounted to the obtaining of a confession by a procedure which must be regarded, for the purposes of the matter, as a violent procedure.

His Honor said that for the reasons which he had mentioned the statement, which amounted to a confession, could not be admitted as evidence.