POSITIONS REVERSED

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 117, 21 May 1925, Page 5

POSITIONS REVERSED

CROWN WITNESS BECOMES

DEFENDANT

AN ELEVENTH HOUR CONFESSION.

"The appearance of this man before tile Court is quite remarkable," said Chief Detective Kemp, when a young man uanied John Henderson, twenty-four years of age, was called before Mr. S. L. P. Free, S.M., at the Magistrate's Court to-day, on a charge of the theft of two watches valued at £2 12s 6d, the property, of David Livingstone. The accused, the Chief Detective explained, was yesterday summoned to appear as a, Crown witness against Basil Harry Fleming, alias Anderson, who was charged with breaking, entering, and theft at Wellington. Fleming was arrested in Palmerston North, and: when approached by the police he said he had obtained certain watches he had in his possession from the present defendant, Henderson, but the latter denied this. Approached on several occasions, Henderson_ maintained his denial that he had ever given any watches to Fleming. The accused Fleming was able to "establish a complete alibi; but just before the case was enlled in Court yesterday, Henderson "revoked" and admitted to Detectice M'Lennan that he had given the watches in question to Fleming. The watches, he said, he had stolen from his employer in Dunedin. "There is just this to be said'for the defendant," concluded the Chief Detective, " and that is that he 'revoked' at the last minute, and did not go into the box and swear false evidence." Accused was before tlie Court once previously in 1916, when he was convicted and discharged for "receiving." On.behalf of the accused, Mr. W. E. Leicester applied for the leniency of the Court. Ho mentioned the defendant's eleventh hour confession, when he could quite as easily have sworn false evidence against Fleming. The previous conviction mentioned- by the police was registered when the accused was sixteen years of age. It was quite a trivial matter.

Defendant was remanded for sentence until to-morrow, to enable a report to be received from the probation officer, Mi-. Mills.