NEW TRIAL SOUGHT

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 147, 17 March 1933, Page 12

NEW TRIAL SOUGHT

Jury’s Finding Questioned APPLICATION TO COURT / ' ■ Application was made in the Court of Appeal yesterday for an order under section 446 of the Crimes Act, 1908, ’ directing a new trial in the case Qf Walter Anderson Clifton, engineer, of Miramar, who was found guilty, with a recommendation to leniency by the jury, in the Supreme Court, Wellington, on two counts of indecent assault on November 1, 1932. The jury disagreed at the first trial on August 11 and 12 last year.

The grounds of the application are set out as follow: (1) That the verdict of the jury was against the weight of evidence; (2) that the Supreme Court at Wellington had granteurieave to apply to the Court of Appeal for a new trial; and (3) it was in the interests of justice that a new trial should be granted. The application was heard before the second: division of the Court of Appeal, comprising the Chief Justice (Sir Michael Myers), Mr. Justice Reed, Mr. Justice Ostler, and Mr. Justice Smith.

Mr. J.' Meltzer, with him Mr. R. O. R. Clarke, appeared for the applicant Clifton, and Mr. A. Fair, K.C., for the Crown.

In opening the case, Mr. Meltzer said that it was submitted firstly that the verdict was one which the jury, viewing the whole, of the evidence, reasonably could not properly have found; secondly, that although a high degree of assurance was necessary in criminal cases, a higher degree than in civil cases, this was a type of case requiring the highest possible degree of assurance because of the nature of the evidence and the fact that the charges were laid by children of tender years; thirdly, the evidence in the case was not such as to have established Clifton’s guilt witty moral certainty and beyond all reasonable doubt; and, fourthly, the evidence was not such as to exclude any other reasonable hypothesis than that of guilt. Mr. Meltzer, traversed the history of the case in detail, and criticised the evidence of the two little girls, upon whom the offences were alleged to have been committed, which, he submitted, was unreliable and inconsistent. Counsel was still proceeding with bis address when the adjournment until 10.30 o’clock this morning was taken.