Supreme Court Found Guilty Of Stealing Liquor

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31123, 28 July 1966, Page 15

Supreme Court Found Guilty Of Stealing Liquor

A man tried in the Supreme Court yesterday for the burglary of the Racecourse Hotel on the night of January 29, and on alternative charges of receiving stolen liquor and theft, admitted in a statement to the police that he had tried to steal the liquor from the man on whose property it was found. In law, this act was still a theft from the original owner, said Mr C. M. Roper, conducting the Crown’s case against Peter Kaimoana, aged 26, a carpenter (Mr E. O. Sullivan), who pleaded not guilty to all three charges against him. Kaimoana’s statement was made to explain his fingerprints being on the bottles of liquor, suggested Mr Roper—the liquor (identified as stolen) having been found in a sack under a bed in a bach on a Bexley road property then occupied by Robert Mervyn Hills, a storeman. Hills, a Crown witness, said that Kaimoana had brought the sack of liquor to Bexley road, New Brighton, on the night of January 31, after a party at Acton street, in the city. Kaimoana, in his statement, said that the liquor was already at Bexley road, in a carton under the bed, and that he had “pinched” all the bottles from it and put them in a sack, hoping for a chance to carry it away. The jury, after hearing these conflicting versions, acquitted Kaimoana on the first two charges, but found him guilty of the theft of the liquor. Mr Justice Macarthur remanded Kaimoana in custody for sentence on August 5. Evidence For Crown

Hills’s evidence was that Kaimoana had taken the liquor to Bexley road for safe keeping, since other occupants of the Acton street house would have drunk it if left there. When he told Kaimoana that the police had called at Bexley road on February 1 and taken it, Kaimoana “didn’t like it at all,” saying that he had “flogged” it from the Racecourse HoteL Kaimoana had threatened him if he had given information to the police.

Cross-examined, Hills admitted a conviction for burglary, but denied being at the Racecourse Hotel on the night of January 29. He said he had not been in the least suspicious about a sack of liquor being taken to his place, and his being asked to look after it. “People have got money to buy liquor these days,” he said. Detective-Sergeant J. A. Dawson, who read Kaimoana’s statement, said in crossexamination that Kaimoana had denied any knowledge of the hotel burglary, and had only made his statement after liquor at Bexley road had been mentioned. Defence Evidence Evidence for the defence was given by Audrey Irene Hodge, who said she had been living with Kaimoana in Milton street, Spreydon, last January, and had spent the night of January 29 with him there. Cross-examined, Hodge said she was a Canadian, and described herself as a housewife. An application for the suppression of her name was refused. Mura Te Matu, a carpenter, said he lived at the Acton street house, and corroborated Kaimoana’s account of taking the liquor out to Bexley road. Cross-examined, Te Matu agreed he also called himself Richard Edwards, and Sam Smith, and admitted convictions for burglary, theft, car conversion, and being a rogue and vagabond. Kaimoana did not give evidence himself. Mr Sullivan, in his address for the defence, said there must be doubt that Kaimoana had burgled the Racecourse Hotel. It was just as likely that Hills, with a conviction for burglary, had been the culprit.

If the jury did not accept Hills’s evidence, there was nothing from which it could impute Kaimoana’s having received the liquor knowing it stolen—and as to the charge of theft, Kaimoana had not actually taken the sack away from Bexley road. His Honour, in summing up, directed that Kaimoana’s action in removing the bottles from their carton amounted to a theft from the true owner.