SUPREME COURT

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27037, 12 May 1953, Page 11

SUPREME COURT

ALLEGED THEFT OF BICYCLE WOMAN PLEADS NOT GUILTY The evidence for the prosecution and for the defence was completed yesterday when Ngaio Agnes Carroll, aged 45, a waitress, appeared before Mr Justice Northcroft and a jury in the Supreme Court on retrial on charges of stealing a bicycle, valued at £26, the property of Lily Mary Stokes, on June 24, 1952,. and of receiving the bicycle well knowing it to have been dis honestly obtained. , ' . . The Court was adjourned until this morning when counsel will address the jury and his Honour will sum up. Mr A. W. Brown is appearing for the Cro.wn, and Mr W. F. Brown for Mrs Carroll, who pleaded not guilty. The case tor the Crown is that Mrs Stokes left her bicycle outside her place of employment on June 24, 1952, and it was gone when she went for it. Mrs Stokes reported her loss to the police and gave them the registered number of the bicycle. In January of this year Mrs Stokes saw her bicycle outside a shop in Colombo street ahd called the police. The bicycle was later found outside a shop in Arfnagh street and when Mrs Carroll went to take it away she was accosted by a constable. The bicycle in Mrs Carroll’s possession was the property of Mrs Stokes. The Crown alleged that Mrs Carroll stole the bicycle or received it knowing it had been stolen. The defence was that Mrs Carroll bought the bicycle from a man whom she got to know as a customer of the cafe where she worked. She knew ; the man as Bernie and, the transaction was completed in a hotel where she ! paid the man £7 10s for the bicycle. She had ridden the bicycle about the streets regularly since she bought it 1 in August, 1952. The man told her it was his sister’s bicycle. Mrs Carroll i said she had no idea the bicycle was I a stolen one.

MAN FOUND GUILTY OF INDECENT ASSAULT Patrick Farrelly, aged 31, a machinist, was found guilty by a jury in the Supreme Court yesterday on a charge that on March 18 he indecently assaulted a girl aged six years and 11 months. Mr Justice Northcroft remanded Farrelly for sentence. Mr A. W. Brown appeared for the Crown, and Mr B. McClelland for Farrelly, who pleaded not guilty. The hearing yesterday was a retrial of the case. Farrelly was tried on the charge last Tuesday but the jury on that occasion failed to agree on a verdict after deliberating for more than four hours. Yesterday the jury, drawn from a new panel, returned with their verdict after a retirement of 1 hour and 25 minutes, including the lunch hour.