COURT OF APPEAL.

Press, Volume LII, Issue 9169, 29 July 1895, Page 6

COURT OF APPEAL.

THE MINNIE DEAN CASE.

(WIESS ASSOCIATION TELBGRAM.) WELLINGTON, July 27. The motion for leave to appeal in the case of Regina v Minnie Dean is being argued in the Appeal Court to-day. All five Judges are present. Dr. Findlay appears in support of the motion, and Mr McDonald, Crown Prosecutor, Invercargill, »nd Mr Gully, Crown Prosecutor for Wellington, for the Crown. In bis argument in support of the motion for leave to appeal in Mrs Dean's case, Dr. Findlay submitted that the case, Makin v ■ the Attorney-General of New South Wales, on the authority of which the evidence objected to had been admitted, did not apply. iThao case had merely repeated what wa3 previously established, that evidence of the -conduct of an accused on other occasions aimilar to that charged in the particular , case could be given to dispose of the suggestion that the particular &ct charged was accidental, or to rebut any other similar ( defence open to the accused. In the present ' case the evidence had been admitted professedly to eliminate the element of accident, but at the time of its admission there was no evidence of accident. It had not been suggested that, if Mrs Dean administered morphia to the child, she had done it accidentally. The evidence of Mrs Dean's 'dealings with other children was, therefore, '.not properly admissible to disprove acciydent, and unless genuinely offered for that (purpose, could not be admitted merely to Strengthen general evidence against accused; vto make evidence of acts admissible they must appear to be part of a aeries of similar occurrences, and to be parts of one . scheme. In the present case the essentials ■of the previous occurrences were not ■ufficiently similar. There was wanting the : eesential circumstance of the tinding of the Ibodies of other children alleged to have fbeen received by Mrs Dean, and in the case of the finding of the skeleton of a child in the garden there was nothing to identify it in any way as that of any child taken in by ; Mrs Dean. Dr. Findlay concluded his ■argument shortly before one o'clock, when f the Court intimated that they did not desire 'to hear counsel for the Crown then, and, if • they required to hear them, they would do io on Monday morning.