LIFE SENTENCE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 83, 8 April 1940, Page 5

LIFE SENTENCE.

FOR MANSLAUGHTER. CAFE SHOOTING SEQUEL ACCIDENT PLEA FAILS. (From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, April 4. Found guilty of manslaughter on a charge of murder in connection with the , Covent Garden Cafe shooting on March : 3, Leslie Ernest Kennedy, 27, was sentenced to penal servitude for life. ' This means that he will have to serve 20 years before he has the right to petition for release. Kennedy showed indifference when the verdict and sentence was announced. When asked if he had anything to say, he shook his head and replied 'No,' and as he left the dock he waved to friends in the Court. When Mr. Justice Street was sentencing Kennedy, a young woman began crying and calling out, and had to be escorted from the Court. Kennedy was charged with the murdor of Alexander Robert Henry Miller, who was stated to have been an associate of underworld figures and to have had a criminal record himself. Miller was shot early in the morning, when the cafe was full of customers, some of whom ducked under the tables, while others ran out into the street. Two shots were fired after a brawl, and Miller was then seen standing by a window holding his stomach. He was assisted to a taxi and taken to Sydney Hospital, but died soon after his admission. The Crown had considerable difficulty with some of its witnesses regarding the identification of Kennedy. One of these witnesses, Stewart James Haines, who refused to reveal how he earned a living, in the witness box said: "I was afraid to identify Kennedy in the line-up at the police station, because I thought discretion the better part of valour. There were some men in that line-up Id term street rats and I was fright-

ened. I'm not frightened now. I now identify Kennedy as the man whom I saw fire the shots in the cafe." Soldier's Evidence. Samuel James Wilkinson, a private in the Second A.1.F., said he crossed the room to help to stop the brawl, but a shot was fired and he was told to stand back. "I stood back behind the pillar. Wouldn't any man?" Wilkinson said. He added he could not positively identify Kennedy. The Crown Prosecutor told the jury: "You may gather that this murder was a crime of the under world, and that some witnesses could tell more if they wanted to or were allowed to." Kennedy, in a statement from the dock, said he was in the cafe with a man named Garrod when a fight developed between Garrod and Miller's companion, Scully. He went to help Garrod who was being hit by Miller with a chair. Miller pulled a gun from his pocket and fired a shot. He grappled with Miller, and in the struggle the gun went off again. "I had no intention of shooting Miller and what happened to me might have happened to any of you," Kennedy told the jury. The jury took two hours to arrive at its verdict of manslaughter. The Judge said he found it difficult to appreciate why the jury lad found the prisoner guilty of the lesser offence, and added: "It appears to me the prisoner deliberately took a lethal weapon and used it jin such a way as to bring about Miller's death."