PURCHASE OF WHISKY

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 62, 6 December 1930, Page 10

PURCHASE OF WHISKY

Completion of Sale IMPORTANT POINT An explanation that he had ordered a bottle of whisky on one day, and had called at the New Zealander Hotel at 6.30 p.m. on the next day to collect it, made by .Arthur Smethurst, grocer’s assistant (Mr. McFarlane), was not accept-* ed by Mr. E. Page, S.M., in the police court yesterday, and Smethurst was fined £2 and costs 10/- for being found unlawfully on licensed premises. In his evidence the defendant said he had ordered the whisky because he was to be married on the following day, and he wanted to make preparations. Sub-Inspector Lopdell said the defendant had been seen going into the hotel after hours, and a sergeant who interviewed him when he came out, had found liquor on him.

Sergeant Cleary, in evidence, detailed how he had stopped .the defendant after he had entered a waiting taxi. In reply to Mr. McFarlane, the sergeant said he was satisfied the defendant had actually ordered a bottle of whisky the previous day. Married That Day.

The defendant, in evidence, said he had taken advantage of his lunch hour to order the whisky, which he had paid for, but he had asked the man behind the counter to put the bottle in the hotel office where he would call for it later. He was not allowed to take alcohol to his working premises, he said. When he had called for the bottle about 6.30 p.m. on the following day he had been stamped by the sergeant. “We went back to the hotel,” the defendant said, “and then I went with the sergeant to the police station. We were there for about one hour and a half, and I signed a statement, but I did not give 't much consideration. I had been married that day, and I supposed my wife would be wondering where I w..” The defendant was cross-examined at length by Sub-Inspector Lopdell on parts of the statement he had made to the sergeant. which he had subsequently repudiated. In his second statement the defendant said he had actually seen and handled the bottle when he was purchasing it. This was in correction of a previous statement that he had not actually handled the bottle until it had been given to him in the hotel. An All-Important Point. The Magistrate: It is an all-important point. If that is true, then the sale would be complete, but. if the first statement is true he was unlawfully in the hotel on that night. Mr. McFarlane contended that the bottle was appropriated when the defendant ordered it.

There was a fundamental difference between the present case and that which had been brought against the licensee some time ago, and dismissed, the magistrate said. The defendant was charged with being found unlawfully on the premises, and the onus was on him to prove that his purpose was lawful. His statement to the police had been altered in one very important aspect, and the magistrate said he found it difficult to think that, a layman would have made that alteration unless it had been pointed out to him. Only someone well versed in such things would know what had completed the sale and made the whisky the defendant's property. “The onus is on the defendant, and in view of the statements he made to the police I am not satisfied that he has discharged it,” he said. “He will be convicted and fined £2.”