ASSAULT CHARGE

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 112, 14 May 1935, Page 10

ASSAULT CHARGE

FKACAS IN BEDEOO3I

SUPREME COURT TRIAL

The sequel to an affair in a boardinghouse in Ghuznee Street on the morning of March 3, when a beer bottle was allegedly used as a weapon, was heard in the Supreme Court today when Thomas Carroll Russell Hunter, a butcher, aged 50, was charged with assaulting James King so as to cause him actual bodily harm. King was brought to the court' from hospital in an ambulance. Mr. Justice Blair was on the Bench. Mr. P. S. K. Macassey appeared for the Crown, and Mr. R. Hardie Boys appeared for the accused. The accused, said Mr. Macassey, was a married man, but he and his wife had separated some little time before the alleged assault took place. Prior to their separation Mrs. Hunter had a pie shop in Bond Street. After they separated she took King in to help her in the making of the pies. On the morning of the alleged assault the accused went to a house in Ghuznee Street where King was living. The landlady took him up to King's room and when he entered the room he found his wife there. He spoke to them and Mrs. Hunter told him not to make a row about it. The accused, alleged Mr. Macassey, then took up a full bottle of beer which was there and attacked King, with the result that King was very severely injured. He had to be taken to hospital, where he remained for some time. The accused disappeared, and later when he was interviewed by the police he said that when he found his wife in the room with King he appeared to go mad and did not remember anything until he found himself sitting under a tree near Aro Street covered with blood. During cross-examination King admitted that he had been convicted as a rogue and vagabond in Christchurch, but denied that Hunter had ever given him any food or money. No evidence was called for the defence. Mr. Hardie Boys, addressing the jury, said that although the "unwritten law" was no excuse in this country, the jury would be influenced by the surrounding circumstances in no little degree. The jury would be influenced in this way, he submitted, that it would require to be clearly satisfied that King had proved beyond doubt that his injuries had been due to an assault and not a fight or scuffle. "THE UNWRITTEN LAW." Reference to "the unwritten law" was made by his Honour in summing up. He said he was using the American term for it. In America, apparently, it seemed to be accepted, according to newspaper, reports and the pictures one saw, that there was some law of that nature. The basis of that law was that if a person found another man in compromising circumstances with his wife he could apparently do what he liked to that man—even in some cases going to the extent of murder. If such a doctrine were accepted in British countries the actual position would be that a form of licensed murder would be recognised. British law provided the remedies of divorce and damages. (Proceeding.)