LAW PROBLEMS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 199, 24 August 1939, Page 19

LAW PROBLEMS.

VERDICT BY JURY.

AGAINST JUDGE'S BELIEF.

PRISONERS' RECORDS.

(From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNR Y, August 18.

Several practical difficulties in the administration of justice Lave cropped up this week. There is, for instance, the ease of Charles Edward Stark, 21, whom a Quarter Sessions jury convicted of receiving, although the "judge had declared his belief that Stark was innocent. He \\i)s hound over bv the judge and appealed against his conviction, hut flie ap/>eal \va*i dismissed. The Appeals Court pointed out that it could not interfere with the jury's verdict unless there had not been a fair trial or no evidence to warrant the verdict, or unless there had been some miscarriage of justice. It added that the only course open to Stark was to apply to the Minister of Justice for an inquiry.

Stark declared that he would do so at once. He said he bought a share in a motor bike which he did not know had been stolen. His employer would not take liim back, and all he could get now was casual lyork. "I will tight to the last ditch to get the conviction wiped out," he declared. A leading city solicitor, Sir. .1. K. Sproule, ha* declared that if necessary he himself will finance Stark up to a £1000 because he believes Stark is innocent. "Not Fair to Prisoner." A recently apj>ointed member of the Bench, Judge McGhie. took action this week on another point of law which apparently has been overlooked for a long time, which may have a very important effect on police statements about convicted men. It has become the practice before a man who has been found guilty is sentenced for police officers to tell the judge all they know about him. and very often in this way they make statements which may be perfectly true statements of fact but which would never be allowed as evidence. As the whole purpose of these statements is to let the judge know what kind of a man the man found guilty is, it appears certain that they must have a big influence on the judge in determining the sentence which he will impose. In the case before Judge McGhie, a constable was giving the history of a man who had been convicted of larceny. The constable was continuing: "I have been told that," when lie was pulled up by the judge, who said: "The Court does not want to know what you have been told. It is not fair to the prisoner. Tell the Court only what you know." The constable was again pulled up when, after stating that the man had consorted with a well-known criminal, he admited that he had only been told this and had' not himself seen the man with the criminal. Self Defence Problem. Another legal point on which judges apparently differ is the question how far a citizen may go in his own selfdefence. In a recent Quarter Sessions case, Judge Curlewis, just before his retirement from the Bench, said that although a man could not legally use more violence than was actually necessary in the circumstances to defend himself, he was entitled even to use a revolver if necessary. At the I'arramatta Quarter Sessions this week. Judge Shortland said that a man was not justified in using a lethal weapon to ward off an assault. According to the evidence, a man who said he feared that another man was going to attack him, loaded a gun which lie had borrowed to shoot a horse. A third man grabbed tlie gun, he declared, and it went off. He was charged with having -hot at the second man with intent to do him bodily harm, but the jury found him not guilty. Discussing the legal niceties of self ; defence later, barristers agreed that in the long run the deciding principle was that a man was not justified in using more force or violence than was necessary in the circumstances to repel an actual or a threatened attack. They agreed that most people in an emergency would take the best measures in self-defence first and reflect afterwards, so that the final say rests with the jury, which decides whether the measures taken were justified by the circumstances.