Eynon Found Guilty Of Manslaughter Of Webb

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31224, 23 November 1966, Page 3

Eynon Found Guilty Of Manslaughter Of Webb

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, November 22. After a retirement of 45 minutes this evening a jury, which included three women, found Robert Ernest Eynon, aged 21, a bag-maker, guilty of the manslaughter of Dexter Norman Webb, aged 23, a journalist, at a house in Brougham street, Wellington, on September 25.

Eynon was charged with murder. Mr Justice McGregor remanded Eynon until December 9 for sentence.

Mr W. R. Birks, with him Mr J. H. C. Larsen, appeared for the Crown. Eynon was represented by Mr G. C. Kent and Mr B. M. Kerr.

No evidence was called for the defence.

In his final address to the jury, Mr Birks asked: “What was the purpose of Eynon’s visit to the house? The party was over, and the lights were out. There was no beer for him to throw out—it was all finished.”

Mr Birks asked the jury to consider why Eynon had a knife in his hand when he was in the bedroom. When Eynon had been interviewed by the police he had said: “I stabbed him three or four times.”

A pathologist had said that the chances of the aorta being injured in a random blow with a sharp instrument were remote, but, said Mr Birks, to stab anyone in the chest was to kill or do actual bodily harm.

The pathologist had said the blow must have been a powerful one, if the injury which caused Webb’s death

had been caused by the knife produced in Court. “Eynon used the knife to prevent his lawful apprenhension and the appropriate verdict is murder,” said Mr Birks. “There was apparently no ulterior reason why my cli-

ent was in the house at all, and why he entered into an altercation with someone he did not know,’* said Mr Kent. It was necessary to search for anything that would provide the background to murder.

“There is no suggestion of theft and the first explanation we get comes from this strange, perhaps eccentric young man, who had some compelling urge because of his dislike of liquor,” said Mr Kent.

“What kind of man is my client?” Mr Kent asked. “He is quiet, inoffensive and everyone likes him. He has worked hard and saved money; it is difficult to reconcile such a man with a charge of murder.”

Mr Kent said that if the fatal wound had been caused by sheer misadventure that would be a complete answer to murder. There had been no plan, no premeditation. The two men involved were unknown to each other. “The accused has no animosity against people. His hatred is only against the consumption of liquor. He had no desire to kill someone he

did not know,” said Mr Kent. It had been reprehensible for him to go in to the house, but that did not constitute murder. “Webb did not want to apprehend the accused. He wanted to deal with him in his own way—with his fists,” said Mr Kent. “Do you think the accused armed himself with an insignificant knife to kill a man he did not know in a house he had not entered before? “Truth is sometimes greater than fiction and death resulted by mischance during a fight in an unlit passage in the middle of the night. “In all the circumstances, can there even be a possibility that this was not an excusable homicide?”

Summing up the evidence, his Honour said that the Court was concerned in a tragic death which placed a great responsibility on all. There was no doubt that Webb met his death by a wound inflicted by the accused. No evidence had been produced that the accused’s background had created a hatred of liquor. It was only conjecture. His Honour said the jury must consider whether Eynon retained the knife in his hand from the time he picked it up in the street until the fatal encounter. Did he have it in his hand during the whole time he was in the house—an hour or more? It was true Webb had aimed blows at the accused, but Eynon had retaliated with a knife.