BOOKMAKING CHARGE

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29220, 2 June 1960, Page 16

BOOKMAKING CHARGE

Defence Case Rejected

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, June 1. Is the man who acts as an agent for a bookmaker’s client guilty of making a bet with a bookmaker? If the client, a policeman is acting under orders and is thereby immune from penalty, is the agent also free from punishment?

These questions were asked of Mr J. F. Keane, S.M., in the Magistrate’s Court today when Neville William Roche, aged 32, a hotel porter, pleaded not guilty to a charge of making a bet with a bookmaker.

At an earlier appearance, Roche was jointly charged with another man with having carried on the business of a bookmaker. The other man, John Edward Thompson, was fined £l5O. The decision on Roche’s case was reserved.

At today’s hearing the Magistrate said he proposed to amend the original charge to one of making a bet with a bookmaker. Counsel for Roche (Mr A. J. Abraham) consented, and entered a plea of not guilty. Mr Abraham agreed to let the earlier evidence stand. This evidence was that Constable A. Peters had entered the hotel and had asked Roche if he knew where he could place money on a horse. After some delay. Roche took Constable Peters’s marked money and returned with a betting slip. The money was later found in Thompson’s possession. Defence Submissions Mr Abraham submitted that there was no case against his client. The wager or bet was between Constable Peters and Thompson. Roche did not stand to gain or lose by the bet: he was acting only as Constable Peters’s agent. “It also follows that Constable Peters—acting under orders—is free from penalty. I may suggest, not very strongly, that Roche was the agent of Peters’s choosing. Would the agent be immune also?”

Mr G. Wells, for the police, said that any money won by Peters would have been handed to Roche to pay Peters. In his submission this proved the charge.

The Magistrate said that if the defendant was to receive winning moneys, as suggested by Mr Wells, that would be sufficient evidence to prove the charge as amended. “I am satisfied the evidence establishes the offence,” he said, fining Roche £lO, with costs.

A major step in the education of the Australian public in the tourist potential of New Zealand was the recent holiday contest run in the “Australian Women’s Weekly,” says the newsletter of the New Zealand Tourist and Publicity department. Organised as part of the travel industry’s combined campaign in Australia, the contest drew 12,468 entries. The winner. Miss C. Pinkerton, of Victoria, will be accompanied by Miss J. Phair, of Victoria, on a three weeks’ holiday tour of New Zealand during the Christy nilas and New Year period.