Supreme Court YOUNG MAN GUILTY OF HOUSEBREAKING

Press, Volume C, Issue 29674, 18 November 1961, Page 15

Supreme Court YOUNG MAN GUILTY OF HOUSEBREAKING

A jury in the Supreme Court yesterday found Robert Marshall Williamson, aged 20. guilty on a charge of breaking, entering, and theft £om a house owned by -'label Claude, at the intersection of Glenroy and Portland streets, Woolston, on the evening of September 11. Mr Justice Richmond remanded the accused to a date to be fixed, for sentence. The jury took 30 minutes to reach its verdict. The accused, who pleaded not guilty to the charge, was represented by Mr J. N. Matson. Mr P. T. Mahon appeared for the Crown. The case opened on Thursday. when a woman gave evidence of seeing two men enter Mrs Claude’s home. The police were called and the police dog followed tracks to a point in Ferry road where the accused and a companion had been picked up by another police party for questioning about the housebreaking. In evidence y ester day, Detective-Cc nstable J. A. Howat said he stopped the accused and a companion, Carstairs, in Ferry road while on his way to the scene of the housebreaking Both men denied that they had been near the house. They agreed to accompany him back to the Central Police Station.

Constable Howat said that later in the evening he told , the accused that the police dog. Buck, had followed a trail from the house to where the accused and Carstairs had been picked up, and that it had found a torch, stolen from the house, near where Constable L. J. Petersen had first stopped the men. Struck Constable "When told that he was being placed under arrest, the accused leapt out of his chair and struck me on the side of the jaw. I was compelled to use force to restrain him, and placed him in a handcuff hold and held him to the floor.” said Constable Howat He said the accused quietened down and apologised for his action, and was quite calm after that. He said the accused then made a statement in which he said he met Carstairs at 7.30 p.m. in Cathedral square. They were both short of money so he suggested that they do some housebreaking. They walked out towards Woolston because about two weeks before they saw a house which was apparently unoccupied in Port land street However, they found lights on in this house, so broke into another house in the area which they found in dirkness. The accused said they did not find any money. Before leaving, the accused took a small torch from the kitchen. “My only explanation for breaking into the house was that I was almost out of money and had no prospects of employment in the near future,” the accused's statement said.

Mr Matson said the evidence against the accused depended largely on the police dog. The dog had certainly followed some tracks from the house to a shop, and then set off again on some tracks which the Crown suggested were the tracks of the persons who broke into the house. The Crown also submitted that because the dog stopped at the point where the accused and his companion were picked up, that the tracks were those of the accused. Mr Matson said it was extremely difficult to test the reliability of the police dog. "We are dealing with a field outside our ken. as dogs have much more highly-developed scenting powers than humans," Mr Matson said. “We cannot really test that what the dog had apparently shown was correct," said Mr Matson. Mr Matson said it was difficult to understand why Constable Petersen had not tried to have the police dog identify the accused, if it could, from the scent on the torch.