NOT GUILTY

Dominion, Volume 16, Issue 34, 3 November 1922, Page 5

NOT GUILTY

ALLEGED INDECENT ASSAULT. James Lynch, a middle-aged working man, was triea in the Supreme Court yesterday, before Mr. Justice Reed and a jury of twelve, of whom Mr. Henry James Burford was foreman, on a charge of indecently assaulting a little girl in Cable Street. Mr. P. S. K. Maoassey appeared for the Crown, and Mr. H. F. O’Leary for the prisoner. The evidence having been taken, Mr. O’Leary, addressing the jury, said that this was plainly a case of a decent, hard-working man who, having accidentally maue the acquaintanace of a little girl, allowed her to accompany him on walks. The fact that she had playfully seized his stick and run away with it, after the alleged acts, was at variance with the effect such acts would have had on a girl of seven years old. He criticised the evidence of witnesses for the Orown, one of whom had admittedly interfered with women in a theatre, and apparently had a prurient mind, and said that if Lynch could be convicted on such evidence no man was safe. \ Mr. Maoassey said that some object was evident in the giving of pennies by Lynch to the little girl, and in his taking her away to secluded spots. His Honour, in his charge to the jury, said the case was one in which an important responsibility rested on them. . ■ The jury retired at 2.40 p.m. and returned at 3.20 with a verdict of pot guilty.