SUPREME COURT TRIALS.

Press, Volume L, Issue 8579, 5 September 1893, Page 6

SUPREME COURT TRIALS.

(fress association telkorams.) AUCKLAND, September 4. Francis Piling, charged with indecent assault, was acquitted. This was the la3t case of the criminal sessions. WELLINGTON* September 4. In the Supreme Court Ja3. Collins and John Douglas, two young men, wore charged with assaulting and robbing a young man named Gersham White. The prisoners were found •' Guilty " and sentenced to two yeara hard labour each. Ernest Gundlach, for the larceny of a clock from the Imperial Hotel, was sentenced to two years. DUNEDIN, September 4. At the Supreme Court to-day the libel case brought by Dr. Truby King against Sidney Maxwell was continued. The Rev. Mr Torrance, *be Chaplain, and Dr. Ogston having given evidence, the case for the prosecution closed. For the defence Mr Woodhouse contended that bringing a charge of criminal libel was a harsh proceeding. The plea of. "Not guilty " had been put in, which raised the ■question of privilege and whether there was libel. Then there was the question of criminal intention. There was no feeling against Dr. King. It was a perfectly fair honest motive to seek to have so called abuses sifted. The public did not know all that went on in the Asylum. Was it not strange, for one thing, that there was no entry of a patient in the last stages of consumption having fallen out of a window, excepting to enter it as an attempted-escape? As regarded a patient who died, there was no mention in a report that he was being held by two men when he died. These were the sort of things the public had a right to know. As to the plea of justification, the other side had relied on theory. They said that the things complained of could not have happened, because the rules forbade their happening. He (Mr Woodhouse) would rely on iacta. The rules had been broken. John Clarkson, charge attendant, in his evidence, declared that he had seen maggots in a sore in the leg of one of the patients. Another attendant named Blaney also deposed that he saw what he took to be maggots. Edwin Tattersal, an ex-attendant, also swore he saw maggots in a sore. There was no mistake, as he saw Attendant Perry take him to the bath and wash them out. The defendant in his evidence also declared he had seen maggots on two occasions. HOKITIKA, September 4. The sittings of the Supreme Court commenced to-day before Mr Justice Denniston. There are only two criminal. cases, arson and perjury. The Grand Jury took an unusually long time in bringing in bills. Both were acquitted, Mrs Hayes charged with arson, and Mitchell with perjury. In the latter Mr Joyce, counsel for accused, relied on the fact that the accused was not sober when the assault out of which the perjury arose was committed, and therefore it could not be held that he had a knowledge that his evidence was false. The jury only took five minutes, returning a verdict of "Not guilty." A libel case between two Hokitika merchants, Mitchel against Bevan, arising out of newspaper correspondence, commences to-morrow.