ADDINGTON MURDER

Evening Post, Volume XCV, Issue 44, 20 February 1918, Page 4

ADDINGTON MURDER

ACCUSED ACQUITTED

COUNSELS' ADDRESSES.

CASE OF CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVI-

DENCE.

(BT TEr.EGRAPH.—PKES3 ASSOCIATION.) CHRISTCHURCH, 19th February.

The trial of Winifred Carrick on a charge of murdering her son Donald Lewis Carrick, aged 3, was continued to-day.

Mr. Alpers announced that he would not call any evidence for the defence;

In opening his address, Mr. Raymond, K.C., Crown Prosecutor, said the fact was clear that an inoffensive baby had been killed, and the jury had to consider who were the persons likely to be included in the category of those who might have committed the crime. It was ridiculous to consider any of those who resided at Burns's. A well-known quotation was, "Show me the motive, and I will show you the man." That might not quite apply in this case, but it had its significance. The material in stinct in this case had been shown to be wanting. In the ordinary course of nature the mother of the murdered child had withheld the protection of a mother, ( &nd had abandoned it. The jury should reject the nature of the charge of abandonment of the child, but the facts had an important bearing in the present case as showing in one aspect that the mother was careless whether the child lived or died. It might be said that if the woman had wished to get completely rid of the child she would have put it straight into the river; but the reply to that was that she feared to take at first the great plunge. Subsequently, he suggested, she became obsessed with the desire to be rid of her offspring.. Mr. Raymond went on to refer to the significance of the accused's actions in trying to locate the whereabouts of the child, and the fact that after her arrest her stockings showed that she had been walking ab6ut in her stockinged feet. The accused had also given a false account of her movements to different people, and it was clear that she was out all night on the night of the mufder. Under all the circumstances the jury would have no difficulty in fixing the responsibility for the crime.

Mr. Alpers, counsel for the accused, in his address to the jury, spoke of the responsibility that lay before the jury, considering the nature of\the evidence, and reminded them that there could be only one penalty in case of the accused being found guilty, and that was the death penalty. Would the jury be prepared to take, that, responsibility? Counsel thought not. He sketched the accused's career, and remarked that the woman had had an unfortunate career. Referring to the introduction of a previous charge against the accused as part of the Crown evidence, Mr. Alpers contended that it was against the English law, which had as a basic principle that a hunteel fox should be given a chance. The Crown had attempted to show that the previous abandonment and the present case were part of one transaction. The jury must not consider the case from a criminal viewpoint, but from that of motive. The motive of abandonment arid that 'of murder were entirely different. It was common for mothers of illegitimate children to abandon their offspring; not in a literal sense, but by adoption^ by roadside, or by other means. The motive in all such cases had to be found. Shame was a chief motive, but that did not apply in the present case. The child was three years of age, and all the early distresses had passed away. There was no similarity in the motives that would have prompted the abandonment of the infant and the brtual murder three years later, by the same person, if for argument's sake it were contended that the two were carried out by the same person. The jury would abolish from their mind all thought that the accused had acted in a selfish manner so far as the child was concerned, and as to her moral character also. The evidence of the crime of Bth December was entirely circumstantial in regard to the accused. The CKrtvh had endeavoured to. show the strength of that evidence. It ■was his (Mr. Alpers's) duty to disclose its weaknesses, and it \vould be for his Honour to balance the two; but after all that it was the jury's job to weigh the whole. He said that none of the evidence was cogent enough to justify them in finding the accused guilty. He argued that the Crown had failed, to suggest any adequate motive for so foul and revolting a crime, and that there had been no concealment on the part of the accused. When accosted by Detective Gibson the accused had been actuated in her failure to explain where she had spent the previous night by the fact that she had had experience of gaol, and of police methods, and these made her cautions. He suggested that the fearful force with which the child had been struck pointed to the murderer being a man. It was possible that the father of the child had determined to abduct it, and when it cried had killed it, Counsel admitted that this did not seem credible, but it seemed to him almost as 1 credible as the story put before them by the Crown. Looking at the evidence, he ventured to, say that the jury could not convict, and concluded by emphasising the point that it was the Crown's duty not to show that the accused person was the probable murderer but was in fact the murderer.

Mr. . Justice Chapman summed up mainly on the question of motive. He said the present was a case of circumstantial evidence, the Crown suggesting that the accused was the one person in the world who had a motive for the crime. If the jury found a flaw iii that reasoning, the accused must be given the benefit of the doubt. The jury retired at 5.12 p.m. and returned at 8 p.m. with a verdict of not guilty, and the prisoner was discharged.