Acquittal in sausage case

Press, 14 June 1978, Page 4

Acquittal in sausage case

A jury in the Supreme I Court yesterday found a 1 shearer hot guilty of the robbery of two sausages, to the £ value of 20c, but guilty on ; a charge of unlawfully en-1 tering the house of Vivienne 1 Ruth Straight on January 31. s When Mr Justice Roper * remanded William Wati 2 Makiri, aged 44, a shearer, ® in custody to June 21, Makiri t told his Honour that he was r already in custody on other ® matters. * Makiri, who pleaded not < guilty to both charges, was j represented by Mr G. H. Nation. Mr N. W. William- r son appeared for the Crown, j Evidence was given that j a retired fisherman was r beaten up by a man he t caught raiding his refriger- r ator. The former fisherman, p Walter Sydney Boese, aged f 73, was unable to identify 1

his attacker, except to say he was a Maori. Norman Bartie Jensen,; aged 23, a prison inmate,' appeared as a witness for the Crown, but was declared a hostile witness. He admitted signing a statement which implicated Makiri in the attack on Mr Boese, but then said in the witness box that the statement was not correct. He said that he had signed it “only to avoid hassles.” . Two sausages valued at 20c were stolen from Mr Boese’s refrigerator. Mrs Straight was alone in her flat shelling peas in the lounge when Makiri walked in, uninvited with another man. The man talked about the Epitaph Riders and motor-cycle gangs, and Makiri took a bottle of beer from the refrigerator but later offered to pay for it.