ALLEGED PERJURY.

Press, Volume LVI, Issue 10886, 1 July 1899, Page 4

ALLEGED PERJURY.

. At the 'Magistrate's Court, yesterday, before Messrs J. Connal, E. Smith and W. W. Collins, J.P.s, the case against Robert Parker, for alleged perjury, begun on the 28th inst., was resumed. Mr Deacon appeared, as before, for the prosecution, Mr Donnelly for the defence. Nicholas Smith said he was a bookmaker of twenty-five standing. Since the latter end of last,year, he had paid Parker on five different occasions, £1 per day, for the privilege of being allowed to remain on racecourses, from which he had been prohibited, and where Jfarker was employed to eject disqualified persons. Cross-examined: Had been convicted two or three times at Parker's instance, of trespass on racecourses; he had also been severaltimes ordered off by Parker, and complied. On one occasion, . witness, after paying Parker, was summonsed by him and fined. ■Notwithstanding that, witness again gave Parker money for the same purpose. This was the case for the prosecution. For the defence, Mr Donnelly addressed the Bench, arguing that looking at the character of the witnesses and their evidence the case should be thrown out. The prosecution was merely a repetition of what had taken place at Wanganui, when Judge Kettle declined to convict Parker on testimony exactly similar 2 and some of it identical. Mr Donnelly commented strongly on the extraordinary fact that the informant, Richard Chamberlain, who had been all the time outside the Court, had not been called ; he dared not, in point of fact, go into thewitness box. Neither had another man been called, Burrows, who was in the party when the sovereign episode took place, and he was the man,- at the conviction of Chamberlain, whom the Stipendiary Magistrate dis-i tinguished as the only witness he could believe. This motive of the prosecution was an effort to get rid of a man who stood in the way of these bookmakers making a living undisturbed, and it should not be sanctioned by allowing it to proceed. An accusation of perjury to succeed must be supported by at least one independent and reliable witness, or other confirmatory .evidence, such as writing. Mr Donnelly's address occupied an hour and a half, after whch he called no evidence, and the Bench, saying they thought a prima facie case had been made out, committed the accused for trial, bail being allowed, the accused in £50, and sureties in a like amount.