TRIAL ON MURDER CHARGE

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30313, 13 December 1963, Page 8

TRIAL ON MURDER CHARGE

Judge To Sum Up Today

The circumstances in which an 18-year-old university student, Alison Judith Harper, died from the effects of a poisonous drug after drinking a cup of coffee in a flat on the night of August 22 were nothing more than a tragic accident, said Mr R. A. Young in the Supreme Court yesterday. He was addressing the jury’ in the trial of Russell Gray Moffitt, aged 19, a science student, on a charge of murdering Miss Harper. Mr C. M. Roper, for the Crown, had alleged that the accused deliberately put the drug in a cup of coffee he gave Miss Harper.

The Crown’s evidence was completed yesterday morning, and Mr Roper and Mr Young then gave their final addresses to the jury. Mr Young called no evidence. Twenty-six witnesses were called by the Crown. Today Mr Justice Macarthur will sum up.

Mr I. C. J. Polson appeared with Mr Roper for the Crown, and Mr P. G. S. Penlingtcn with Mr Young for the accused.

The jury inspected the accused's flat aifter the completion of the Crown’s case. The last witness for the Crown, Detective-Inspector William Edward Hollinshead, said he was in charge of inquiries into Miss Harper’s death on August 23. He told Detective Meikle to take possession of articles in the accused's flat which would help in the investigations. He interviewed the accused in hospital at 11.30 a.m. The i accused appeared to be quite I well but closed his eyes and

refused to answer some questions, holding his stomach as though in pain. The accused said he had done experiments in his flat the previous day, using a saucer and mixing the chemicals with the handle of a teaspoon. He had used four substances. [These included a drug referred to as A, which is said to have caused Miss Harper’s death]. The accused said he knew drug A was reputed to be a sex stimulant, but he had not put any in Miss Harper's cup. The accused said he thought the poison must have been in the cup when he took it from the sink. He had only cold water laid on in his flat, and this made it hard to wash dishes. He had got into the habit of only wiping the outside of cups. “The accused said the poison must have been in the cup in the sink but he could not see it because of the dim light in the. kitchenette,” said the witness. “He said that when Miss Harper complained of pain after drinking the coffee he thought she had ’flu.” Miss Harper became worse and he set out to carry her to hospital, but stopped at the Students’ Union building, and a taxi was called from there. When he was sent back to his flat he got the cup and chemicals and returned to the hospital, throwing the chemicals into the Avon river on the way. He did not know why he had done this, but lie had panicked and was getting stomach pains himself at this time.

When it was suggested that the accused had done this to destroy evidence, he replied that he did not think he was destroying evidence and had not thought of it in that way. Asked whether he had

administered drug A to Miss Harper as a sex stimulant because he intended to have sexual intercourse with her, but when things went wrong he tried to destroy the evidence, the accused said that this was not right, and he had told the truth, said the witness. The accused said he asked the caretaker to open the chemistry block so that he could get some phenol and drug A. He had realised he had been foolish in throwing the chemicals into the river, and wanted to get mere to replace them. The witness said that the accused said he might have made a mistake in his experiments and used drug A instead of phenol as they looked similar. If he had, the drug A would be all over the flat. Cross-examination In cross-examination by Mr Young the witness was asked why it had been left to the police to select the dishes to be sent to the Government .analyst He said that the I Government analyst had been to the flat. “I decided to give the analyst what was necessary for the case, and if he asked for anything further these would be available." said tile (Witness. He admitted the (analyst would not know I about other teaspoons or a ■saucer in the flat unless told. The witness was asked whether he had gone to interview the accused with the (thought in mind that the accused had given Miss Harper drug A. He said he thought : this was a great possibility. ■ Mr Young: And was the i whole course of your conduct at the interview dictated by this preliminary finding? The witness: It was one of the things. Was that a factor which determined, when he com- ‘ plained of pain, that he was ; shamming?—No. I just , thought he was shamming.

The witness denied that he had disregarded the accused’s complaint of pain, but said it appeared to him to be put on. He said be still considered the accused was

shamming, in spite of the medical evidence. The witness said the accused had no criminal convictions. Asked whether it was the usual practice to interrogate minors without getting in touch with the parents, he said that some of the worst criminals were under 19 years. Under 17 was a different story. If they were under 17 the police got in touch with the parents. If older, but under 21, they notified the parents if they were arrested. Crown Address Mr Roper said the defence had hardly questioned the Crown evidence that Miss Harper died from drug A. and that she consumed it in a cup of coffee in the accused's flat. The accused had admitted having the drug in his flat. Mr Roper suggested that the time lag in seeking help for Miss Harper was a sinister one and the accused knew what had caused her illness and delayed getting help in the hope she would improve. The accused had an unhealthy interest in drugs of addiction and in sex, and knew that drug A was a reputed aphrodisiac. The Crown, Mr Roper said, had to go further than satisfy the jury that the accused deliberately put the poison in the cup for the charge of murder to be established. It had to establish the accused’s intention. There were three possible intentions the accused might have had. The first, that he had given her the drug only out of scientific interest to test its effects, was an unlikely possibility. Another was that he had given the drug to excite the girl’s passions so that she would be more receptive to his advances, not necessarily of an indecent nature. If the jury decided on this alternative it was entitled to bring in a verdict of manslaughter. Third Alternative The third alternative, Mr Roper said, was that the accused intended to reduce the girl to a stage where she was incapable of giving proper consent to his indecent actions, either an indecent assault, touching, or intercourse. “If the accused intended to assault her indecently and administered the drug knowing it to be likely to cause death, although he may not have meant to do her any harm, it would still justify a finding of murder,” Mr Roper said. If the jury found that the accused had administered the drug to facilitate raping Miss Harper, that would be murder whether the accused knew its likely effects or not Mr Roper said that a charge of manslaughter would be proved if it was held that the drug was taken accidentally but that the accused failed to use reasonable care to see that nobody was endangered by what he knew as a dangerous drug. Defence Address Mr Young submitted that the jury should not accept the Crown's story that the accused administered the drug deliberately for sexual purposes. Evidence clearly established that Miss Harper was a thoroughly decent girl, taking part in activities and interests normal for a girl of her age. She was educated in a good home. “Would she be the type of girl that a young man would deliberately try to seduce with the aid of a drug?” he asked. If the accused wanted to find a girl of easy virtue his flat was in a part of Christchurch where there would have been no difficulty whatever in finding such a person. Tie only evidence of: familiarity had been the j accused’s kissing and fond-i ling at the flat. Such elemen-1 tary love-making was common among persons of this age. Evidence showed that Miss Harper was a virgin, and that there were no marks of violence on her body, Mr Young said.

The detectives investigating the case had jumped to the attractive and easy theory that the drug had been given for sexual purposes, and they had then failed in their duty to collect proper evidence for the jury. The police thought they had a watertight theory, and in the next vital hours they did not take the degree of care they should have for such a grave charge. The detectives had made up their minds as to the accused's guilt in the first few hours, and the whole of their case was prepared on the false

conclusions they had formed, Mr Young said.

“Court Deprived”

The most exacting scientific research into the case must depend on the accuracy of the preliminary and fundamental matters. But the Court had been deprived of scientific evidence relating to another two teaspoons and a saucer in the flat. Detective Meikle had selected only one of the teaspoons because it bore traces of coffee, and this was sent to the Government analyst. The others had not been taken because they were immersed in water. Yet it might well be that on one or both of the other spoons, or on the other saucer, there was some drug A. Evidence showed that it adhered to any surface it touched.

So convinced were the detectives in the sex theory that, when they went to interview the accused in Princess Margaret Hospital and saw him twisting in pain they decided he was shamming. This was in spite of the evidence of doctors called by the Crown that the accused was ill and all the symptoms pointed to the fact that he also had ingested drug A. The accused was considered a possible suicide risk, said Mr Young, wtio asked the jury to disregard the detectives’ evidence in favour of the medical evidence.

“A detective of only three years’ experience was entrusted to select what would go to the Government analyst, and the Court has been deprived of scientific evidence relating to tile remaining teaspoons and saucers. Only a few articles in the flat were selected for analysis, in spite of evidence that pointed to the accused’s consumption of the drug, and of the difficulty in seeing the crystals.” Mr Young said the detectives had assumed that Miss Harper had got the poison from the cup, but no trace of it was found on analysis. Accused “Frank” The accused had been frank with the doctors in telling them the drug was one of the most likely that Miss Harper might have taken, and they were able to carry out treatment accordingly. It would be unthinkable to convict on slender evidence mainly based on suspicion, he said. To convict the accused of manslaughter the jury must find him guilty of dupable homicide. The jury would have to ask itself whether the accused caused Miss Harper to die through lack of reasonable care while he had a substance he knew to be dangerous. “Was the drug such that an ordinary person would have known it could endanger life without reasonable care in its handling?” Mr Young asked. He submitted that no ordinary person would have known this before the present case. There had been no previous cases involving the drug in New Zealand, and there was nothing in its reputed effects to indicate that it was lethal. The accused learned nothing in his university classes about the drug or its dan. gerous properties. He did not think of it as a deadly poison when he heard of its use in hair lotions and in treatment of stock animals. “So little was known of the drug that the ordinary man would not have known that it had these dreadful poisoning propensities,” Mr Young said. The drug was on a shelf at a wholesale druggist where he had worked, and had nothing to indicate it was poisonous like other substances. Although the accused was interested in drugs and was a student, he did not know that very small quantities of the drug could be lethal, Mr Young submitted “Tragic Accident” “Miss Harper’s death rej suited from no more than a : tragic accident," Mr Young j said. i The accused had told of I mixing various drugs in a saucer with the handle of a spoon d’”-ing experiments Evidence was that the drug crystals were difficult to see If the other spoons and saucer had been analysed further light might have been shed on the case. The drug could have been inadvertently taken by Miss Harper, and this could be consistent with the analyst’s findings. “If she had simply sipped the coffee from the spoon, that would account for the fact that none of the drug was found in the cup,” he sard. The drug had been found on the spoon and saucer analysed. Mr Young said the jury . was bound to acquit the accused if it found Miss Har- , per's death had been caused i by accident or misadventure 1 Referring to the evidence

that the accused had panicked and thrown the chemicals into the river, Mr Young said the accused was harassed to the point of panic at the time. He had tried to right matters by trying to get more drugs from the university. The evidence that the accused also suffered poisoning from the drug was indicative of his innocence. Both he and Miss Harper suffered poisoning, but Miss Harper either got more or reacted differently. Public feeling had run high before the truth emerged in this case, said Mr Young. Some might be critical of the accused's interests in drugs and chemistry, but brilliant scientists sometimes developed from such beginnings He said that the jury should put in its proper perspective the fact that medical evidence showed Miss Harper was doomed from the time she took the poison, as there was no antidote. The accused helped her and stayed with her, and did his humble best.