FOR TRIAL ON CHARGES AFTER FATAL COLLISION

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29308, 13 September 1960, Page 19

FOR TRIAL ON CHARGES AFTER FATAL COLLISION

(New Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, Sept. 12. When the hearing of the prosecution’s evidence was completed in the Lower Hutt Magistrate’s Court today, James Johnson Henderson, aged 36, an assistant foreman, was committed to the November sitting of the Supreme Court in Wellington by Mr J. D. Willis, S.M. Henderson faces a charge of driv'.ig while under the influence of alcohol, on June 25, so as to cause the death of Jean Baptiste Georges-Picot, Charge d’Affaires of the French Embassy, and of his wife, France Marcile GeorgesPicot. Further charges allege negligent driving causing two deaths, and negligent driving causing actual bodily harm to Claude Beguin Billecocq, Counsellor of the Embassy and driver of the Embassy car which was involved in a collision with the car driven by Henderson. Mr J. D. Murray prosecuted. Counsel for Henderson was Mr R. Stacey, with him Mr G. A. Gibson. At the resumption of the hearing this morning, Percival James Clark, an analyst, gave an account of his examination of soil samples taken from the left rear mudguard of Henderson’s car and from the bank where wheelmarks were found. The distribution of particles in the two samples was the same, he said. A sample of soil from further south along the road was similar, while a sample from some distance away bore hardly any resemblance. Lucy Beatrice Moore, a botanist, said that her study of foliage samples from the car’s mudguard showed eight species of plant These plants were common in the Hutt Valley, she said, but nowhere between Petone and the scene of the accident was there a place where all could be collected in one sample, apart from the bank where wheel marks were found, shortly before the scene of the crash. At the conclusion of the prosecution evidence, Mr Stacey said that the charge of intoxicated driving causing death was entirely unsupported, and should never have been brought against Henderson. It would probably never have been brought if the

national authorities had not been scrupulous, and even over-scrupu-lous, in prosecuting a New Zealand national where the case concerned the death of two diplomatic representatives of a friendly power, who were persons of social prominence, said Mr Stacey. Seven persons had seen Henderson after the crash, and not one of them had seen anything in the slightest degree referable to intoxication, he continued. All had said that Henderson appeared shocked to a greater or less degree. There would have been criticism of the police if the charge of intoxicated driving causing death had not been brought, replied Mr Murray. Advanced intoxication was not implied, but it was alleged that Henderson had been affected by liquor. There was no importance to be attached to the fact that the persons killed were members of a diplomatic corps and the defendant was a New Zealand National, said the Magistrate. Intoxication “out and out” did not have to be established. Henderson was allowed bail of £250, with a similar surety, on the charge of driving while under the influence of alcohol so as to cause death.