SUPREME COURT Criminal Session Opens With 10 Indictments

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30880, 13 October 1965, Page 15

SUPREME COURT Criminal Session Opens With 10 Indictments

Ten indictments against 12 persons will be presented at the criminal session of the Supreme Court in Christchurch, which began yesterday.

Further indictments arising from the disturbances at Paparua Prison will be presented at an extension of the criminal session after November 8.

The criminal session is being presided over by Mr Justice Macarthur, who returned to duty on the Supreme Court Bench yesterday, after several months’ sabbatical leave.

The first 10 indictments to be presented are: A count of rape. Three counts of theft, one cf them against two persons. A count of forgery. A count of conspiring to obstruct the course of justice, against two persons. A count of using obscene language in a public place. A count of permitting the commission of an indecent act.

A count of indecent assault on a girl under the age of 12. A count of false pretences.

His Honour said that juries had been called to try these criminal cases for the nine days to October 22. “There will be four days in the week beginning October 25 available, it is hoped, for civil jury cases,” His Honour said.

Further juries would be called for the week beginning November 8, and the next week as well —at which time charges arising from the Paparua Prison riot would be tried, His Honour indicated.

His Honour reminded members of the legal profession that between now and the Christmas vacation, the judges had also to serve three cir-

cuits—Nelson. Blenheim, and Greymouth.

Charge Of Rape A charge of rape against Jan Cornelius Andreas Hagenaar. aged 19, a driver, heard by a jury of 10 men and two women, was the first case tried. Hagenaar, who was defended by Mr G. R. Lascelles, pleaded not guilty. For the Crown, Mr C. M. Roper led evidence that the girl complainant, whose name was suppressed, had been taken by the accused to a party in Christchurch on the night of June 19, where she got “in an advanced state of intoxication.” Two girls took her outside and put her in the back seat of the accused’s car for him to drive her home. On the way, the accused stopped the car, got into the back seat, and, it was alleged, raped the girl. Evidence of the girl’s condition when she was brought home by the accused in the early hours of June 20 was given by her mother and grandmother. Detective-Sergeant J. W. Wooders, in evidence of an interview with the accused, said that he had emphatically denied the allegation of rape against him. No evidence was called for the defence.

Addressing the jury, Mr Lascelles said that the allegation of rape was singularly easy to make—“and sometimes it presents the accused person with the devil’s own job to exonerate himself,” he said. “This could be the situation here.” The accused and the girl had been friends for some time, and knew each other well enough to have mooted marriage, Mr Lascelles said. The girl had not alleged rape at the time she got home. “Rape was not alleged for some time,” he said. “Any

normal girl so outraged would have had something to say about it when she got home.”

“Has the Crown proved that the girl did not consent?” said Mr Lascelles. “1 suggest to you that the girl was a bit of an exhibitionist, very prone to hysteria, and not so drunk as made out.” Women might often embark on a course of conduct and then for various reasons withdraw from it Mr Lascelles said.

For the Crown, Mr Roper submitted that there was ample evidence to convict the accused of rape—although the jury could, if it thought fit, bring in a verdict of attempted rape. But the girl complainant, although talkative, had been quite definite in her evidence of intercourse without her consent. The Court was then adjourned to this morning, when his Honour will sum up.