Drug-count acquittal

Press, 7 March 1978, Page 4

Drug-count acquittal

It took a jurj' 20 minutes, in the Supreme Court yester- [ day to find Timothy Craw- [ ford Smith, aged 21, an apprentice plumber, not guilty on a charge of cultivating cannabis at Highbank between November 20 and 27. Mr Justice Casey discharged Smith. Evidence was given that ' the police kept watch for about a week on four patches i of cannabis plants among ] sycamore trees in a remote 1

, fenced-off section of the [Rakaia riverbed near High[bank before Smith and his girlfriend, leading horses, arrived on the scene. Mr N. W. Williamson appeared for the Crown and Messrs A. D. Holland and G. H. Nation for Smith, who pleaded not guilty. Smith said in evidence that I he had been shooting rabbits i in the riverbed last year when i he discovered the plots of < cannabis. He had shown the 1 plants to a friend of his sis- [ t ter and he had told him to : t

have nothing to do with them. Fie took his advice. On the afternoon he was arrested, he and his girlfriend were out exercising horses belonging to his mother. They had walked the horses down the track into the river bed. After helping his girlfriend up onto her horse, his horse had run off in the direction of the sycamore trees. He went after it and then stopped to relieve himself. He had not touched the plants, or weeded or watered them.