CRIMINAL SESSIONS

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 18, 19 October 1936, Page 11

CRIMINAL SESSIONS

DISTRICT CONGRATULATED

Congratulations on. the lightness of the criminal calendar were offered to the Wellington district today by Mr. Justice Johnston at the opening of the criminal sessions in the Supreme Court. Only six Wellington cases are set down for trial, a seventh being a Napier case in which a new trial has been granted.

Mr. W. H. Cunningham, with him Mr. C. Evans-Scott,. appeared for the Crown.

The Grand Jury was empanelled as follows: —

William James Gaudin (foreman), Edward Bell Tamplin, Noel William Pulsford, William Nuttall, Herbert Henry Lee, Philip Whitney Maddock, Frank Richard Lissington, Herbert John Milson, Arthur George McDonald, Edward Caswell, Walter Duncan, Colin Drake Truebridge, Robert Ernest Flaws, Robert Claude Fish, Frank Sargeant Huggins, Bertie Roland Irvine, James Harold Tilling, Rodger Claude Brian; Eric Lawson, Eric Francis Joseph Reeves, and George Ewen Scott.

"You have not a very difficult or prolonged task this morning, as there are only six cases to come before you," said his Honour'in his charge to the Grand Jury, "and I suppose the district is to be congratulated on the small amount of crime that comes before you now, although, of course, a great number of cases come direct to this Court from the Magistrate's Court; serious crimes that have to be sentenced here, crimes in which criminals have pleaded guilty. Nevertheless, it is satisfactory to. know that we have only six cases for trial."

Three of those six cases, continued his Honour, were crimes against property. , ■ .

There was also a case brought under the Motor Vehicles Act Amendment, 1936, one of the first cases to be brought under the "hit-and-run" section —failing to stop after an accident. The last two cases were of a sexual nature.

True bills were returned by the Grand Jury in five Of the six cases:—

Herbert William Harrhy, charges of theft and receiving; Lionel John Lynch, a charge of forgery; Harry Clare, a charge of incest; Thomas Henry Hale, one charge of forgery and two of uttering; and Leslie James McPike, one charge of failing to stop after an accident. No bill was returned agajnst David Hamilton Sinclair, charged with indecently assaulting a male.

Also for trial is Isabel Annie Ayes, on seven counts of procuring abortion. At the Napier hearing of this case the jury disagreed; a new trial was ordered, and a change of venue to Wellington was made.