JURY DISAGREES

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 43, 20 February 1914, Page 4

JURY DISAGREES

SEDITION CHARGE THE CASE AGAINST YOUNG. Hearing was concluded after The Post went to press yesterday in the case in which William Thomas Young was charged with sedition. His Honour the Chief Justice, Sir Robert Stout, was on the Bench. Mr. P. S. K. Macassey appeared for the Crown, while the prisoner was defended by Mr. T. M. Wilford, and with him Mr. P. J. O'Regan. Mr. Wilford, in addressing the jury, said that New Zealand had had very little to do with tho crime of sedition. The present trial was a peculiar case. If the jury read the Crimes Act they would get very little idea of what the crime of sedition really was. Seditious words were words expressive of a seditious intention. What exactly was a seditious intention, however? It was incapable of any definition which could bring Young's speech within the compass of sedition. Proceeding, counsel said that if the words were wrong, then tho I newspapers had — as pointed out by Mr. Justice Cabe in the famous trial of John Burns, "scattered the poison far and wide," by giving publicity to the prisoner's speech. Counsel also quoted the Judge to the effect that the jury | should not be too hasty to mark any hasty or ill-considered statement made in the heat of the moment. As regards Young's position, did it not strike them that instead of being prosecuted, the prisoner was now being persecuted? The Crown had sent him to gaol on two lines of the speech, and, deleting these two lines from the indictment, it was now endeavouring to convict him again for the very same speech. The Crown left the two lines in for the grand jury, but cut them out when the indictment came before the common jury. Was this playing the game? Had not the punishment given to Young already fitted the crime? At its best the Crown's caae gave only very fragmentary proof of the use of the words quoted in the indictment. Therefore the first plank that the Crown had to rely upon had gone. From the 26th October down to to-day the accused had counselled moderation and preached peace. HIS HONOUR SUMS UP. In summing up, his Honour said that the meaning of sedition was really something that tended to the' destruction of the Government — not any special Government. Mr. Wilford's point of law about the accused being twice tried for the same offence was a mat\er for the Court of Appeal and not for the jury. TII9 jury should keep its mind on the question as to whether the accused had used words which tended to civil war or to violence. Neither were they to be guided by what had happened in previous cases, that of Burns and others. As to the meaning of the words of tho accused, his Honour quoted this passage : "If needs be there shall not be a wharf for 'scabs' to work on." Did it not mean — the jury might ask — that the wharf was to be destroyed? Then, what was the meaning of " bringing 10,000 or 15,000 men to Wellington." Was it to keep the peace or was it to seek violence? The jury disagreed. His Honour stated that the question of a new trial would stand over until after the sittings of the Court of Appeal, at which the legal points raised on behalf of the prisoner will be decided. Young will in the meantime serve the balance of the sentence of three months' imprisonment, imposed on him in the Lower -Court.