ALLEGED WIFE MURDER

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 122, 26 May 1930, Page 11

ALLEGED WIFE MURDER

TRIAL OF A. T. MUNN

COUNSEL ADDRESSES JURY

(By Telegraph.—Press Association.) AUCKLAND, This Day. The trial of Arthur Thomas Munn on a charge of his wifo by poisoning her with strychnine to-day enterod on the thirteenth day of hear-

Mr. B. 11. Nortlieroft, counsel for the defence, began his address to the jury this morning. Mr. Nortlieroft contended that Munn had shown himself to be an entirely decent and worthy citizen. Ho had a certain brusque, rough manner, but that meant nothing. There was nothing to suggest that Munn was a mail who could callously plan a murder and carry it out.in the horrible manner indicated by the Crown. Ho warned tho jury that it must disregard everything but j the cvidenco before it, particularly certain evidence in tho Lower Court concerning Mrs. Munn's alleged remark about the bitterness of the salts j she had taken. Munn's demeanour in: tho witness j box was that of an innocent man! wrongly charged. Mr. Northcroft admitted that Munn's actions >vith regai'd to Mrs. Stuck were not above criticism, but Munn admitted that he now knew he was doing wrong. The purppso of the Crown's cross-examination was to inflame the jury's mind by representing Munn as so blackguardedly that he should be convicted. It would have been easy and blackgnardedly for Munu to have said "Yes, my affair with " Mrs. Stuck svas just what you think it was," but Munn had preferred to tell the' truth. When the jury found minor differences between Munn's statement to tho police and his evidence from the box, they had to remember that tho statements were not in Muun's actual words. Much had been made of the fact that Mrs. Munn had signed a will in Munn's favour. It was also true that he made his will in her favour. Mr. Northcroft said that the chemist's register showed that there were numerous purchases of poison by residents. Because Munn had puchased poison months before, was it to be said that he deliberately purchased it to poison his wife? If so, it was unsafe for anybody to buy poison. Munn's alleged brutal remark to his wife that when the linoleum was worn out she could "damn woll scrub the boards" turned out to have been made jokingly.

Referring to the letter written to her mother by Mrs. Munn a week prior to her illness, 'Mr. Northcroft said tho Crown suggested that it was an amazing thing that, with Mrs. Stuck away in Christchurch, Munn should take his wife and children out in a car; but it had been brought out in the cross-ex-amination of Crown witnesses that it was the usual thing for Munn to take his wife and family out on Sundays. The Crown had sought to show that Munn had set out to deceive Dr. Dudding; but how did this agree with the fact that at the very moment when his wife had her first seizure he rushed off to get that doctor, and on another occasion called at the doctor's to make certain he would como to sco her?

Mr. Northcroft contended that Dr. Dudding had allowed his suspicions to be distorted, and alleged that if the doctor had done his duty on tho day Mrs. Munn had the fatal seizure she would have been nlivo to-day.

Mr. Justice Ilerdman checked counsel, saying that the question for the jury was whether .Munn gave poison to his wife.

As Mr. Nortlieroft is traversing much of the evidence in detail his address is expected to last most Of tho day.