NOT GUILTY

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 32, 8 February 1927, Page 9

NOT GUILTY

TRAP TO CATCH ACCUSED

(By Telegraph.)

(Special to "The Evening Post.")

AUCKLAND, This Day. An allegation that the police had improperly made use of a small boy as an agent-provocateur was made by counsel in the Supreme Court, when alternative charges of indecently assaulting a boy of eleven, and of attempting .the same offence, were preferred against William Gerald Cain. The evidence for the prosecution was that after the boy had reported to his father that he had had some dealings with. a man in a park, the boy was sent back to the park again, while the father and two constables kept watch. The boy was'instructed not to go near the man unless the man called to him. As a result of what happened charges were laid, and counsel, addressing the jury, condemned the conduct of the police and the father in using the boy to set a trap for the accused. He invited the jury, if it disapproved of what the police and the father had done, to express that disapproval by a verdict of not guilty.

Mr. Justice Stringer said the conduct of the police and the father was a collateral matter, and one which the jury should not consider in reaching its verdict. The jury' found accused not guilty.