NEILING SENTENCED

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 114, 16 May 1941, Page 12

NEILING SENTENCED

A LIFE TERM

FOUND GUILTY OF MANSLAUGHTER

MRS. HORTON'S

DEATH

Imprisonment with hard labour for life was the sentence imposed on Leonard Neiling, aged 29, a labourer, after a jury in the Supreme Court last night had returned a verdict of manslaughter against him. The verdict followed | a four-day trial o!' .Neiling on a charge of murdering Mrs. Marj jory Livingston Horton at WelI lington on January 9 last. The i jury retired at 4.38 p.m. and, cxj cept for a few minutes when a j further direction on the law was i sought from his Honour, did not bring in their verdict until 9.8 p.m. The Chief Justice (Sir Michael Myers), in imposing sentence, described the offence as vile, sordid, and brutal. Mr. C. H. Western,. K.C., and Mr. W. R. Birks conducted the prosecution, and the accused was represented by Mr. W. E. Leicester and Mr. T. P. McCarthy. Asked if he had anything to say before sentence was passed on him, Neiling said, "Yes, I have this to say; I am innocent of the charge." Mr. Leicester said that though the prisoner had made that observation, counsel felt he should add that it was his duty to draw the attention of the Court to the fact that the prisoner was afTected by liquor when the offence took place. His Honour asked for details of a conviction against the prisoner in 1938 for assaulting a female. Mr. McCarthy, who appeared for the prisoner on that occasion, said the charge arose through a drunken brawl at Petone during which Miss Harriet Rangiwhetu, who had given evidence in the present case, had been hit. I"A MERCIFUL VIEW." "Prisoner at the Bar," said his Honour, "you have been- found guilty of a vile, sordid, and brutal offence, and you have been convicted upon evidence which the jury have regarded as conclusive, and I share their view. They have taken a merciful view of the case in finding you guilty of manslaughter only. I shall not take upon myself the responsibility of allowing you to be at large, even after the fairly substantial term which is usually imposed nowadays for the offence of manslaughter. The way in which you knocked this woman about and thenIraped her—knocked her about in such a way as to cause her death — those acts, as I say, constitute a vile and brutal crime. The sentence of the crime is that you be imprisoned and kept to hard labour for life." His Honour added to the jury that the sentence did not mean that the prisoner would remain in prison for life. After a substantial portion of the sentence had been served, it rested with the Prisons Board to decide, whether he was fit to be released, but J in the meantime, he felt he had a duty to protect the public from men of that kind. ADDRESS BY CROWN. Addressing the jury in the afternoon, Mr. Weston said two points had to be | decided by them: did the accused inflict the injuries suffered by Mrs. Horton.. and did those injuries cause her death? His Honour: I shall tell the jury that it will come down to one question, because the medical witnesses are in agreement that those injuries were the cause of death—caused the thrombosis which caused death. lam not saying anything about the details of throttling —that is another matter. What was in the accused's mind when he arrived at Oriental Bay? continued counsel. In his talk with the taxi-driver there was definite evidence that he had formed some intention to return from Oriental Bay with Mrs. Horton before 2 o'clock. What caused him to change his plans was one of the crucial matters to be decided. Did he leave Mrs. Horton safe, or did he attack her before he left? One full bottle of beer was left behind about eight yards from the parapet, and two, broken bottles were also found. As I men of the world the jury would probably agree that when alcohol was thrown away something was wrong. If the accused left Mrs. Horton safe some other man must have found her, or she must have gone up to the road, picked up with some other man, and returned to the beach. Either the accused did the damage to Mrs. Horton or some other man did it. The time factor came in in a most important fashion. The damage could not have been done in a minute, and it must have been done five or ten minutes past midnight and seventeen minutes past one, because the knotted handkerchief was found three feet below the high water mark, and high water was at 1.17 a.m. The Crown said again that the accused disappeared. He did not return to Mrs. Collins at Petone on January 10 as he said he would, he did not report for the work he had found at Khandallah, and he did not give notice to the Probation Officer of his intention to leave, as 'his probationary licence demanded. PRISONER'S MOVEMENTS.' When the accused was asked to explain his movements he would make no statement, but when pressed and told that Miss Harriet Rangiwhetu had said he was on the bus he admitted being on it. Once, he admitted being in the taxi and at Oriental Bay, so why, if he were innocent, did he not tell the whole story? The blood on the handkerchief found on him and the blood on his trousers was quite consistent with the sores on the back of his hands, but he could not explain away the blood on the coat and waist- j coat. - { In spite of the theory put forward' by Dr. Park, continued Mr. Weston, the ' Crown seriously suggested that the theory advanced by the prosecution was an accurate representation of what! happened and one that the jury could i accept. j QUESTIONS FOR JURY. j His Honour, in his summing up, said! that the case did not.present the diffi- j culties that existed frequently in cases of the kind. There were no complicating factors such as insanity, provocation, justification, or self- | defence, and the Crown suggested that I there was no difficulty regarding iden-1 tificalion. The sole questions for the | jury's consideration were: Was the) deceased woman-killed, and, if so, was i she killed by the prisoner? If the answer was no, then the prisoner must be acquitted; if the answer was yes, then he was guilty of murder or at j least manslaughter. After referring j to the law on the subject, his Honour • pointed out that the fact that the woman did not die for two or three days afterwards was immaterial to the charge. The three, principal medical witnesses agreed that whatever the cause of the injuries, added to the shock, they predisposed the woman to the thrombosis which caused her death, even if there was no suggestion of throttling. His Honour said he thought that Mr. Leicester had put the position too strongly in saying that no possibility j should be disregarded. Nowadays

almost anything was possible, and scarcely anything was absolutely impossible. If, then, any possibility at all were sufficient to secure an acquittal in a criminal case, it might be very difficult in any criminal case for a jury to find a.verdict of guilty. The alternative hypothesis must be a reasonable one, judged by the standards of common sense and human probabilities. STATEMENTS TO POLICE. The evidence of identification of the accused on the night of January 8 was referred to by his Honour, who also referred to the admissions made by the accused himself regarding his movements that night to DetectiveSergeant McLennan. If the accused was the deceased's companion at Oriental Bay. what did the jury think of the suggested possibility that the accused had left her on the beach and that some other man had gone down on to the beach and assaulted her? Was that a reasonable possibility or probability? His Honour next referred to the accused's movements and statements on January 9 and subsequently, and asked the jury to consider what an innocent man would have been expected to do and say when he knew that the police were making inquiries into Mrs. Horton's death. His Honour also pointed nut that the accused had made no explanation of the bloodstains on his coat and vest. In the light of the facts and in the absence of a true explanation of his movements on the night of January 8, 'was there any reasonable conclusion to draw but that he remained on the beach with Mrs. Horton? MEDICAL EVIDENCE. The next question to consider, continued his Honour, was whether the injuries suffered by Mrs. Horton had been inflicted by the accused. Apart from the two medical witnesses for the Crown. Dr. Park had also given evidence. Dr. Park was no doubt a man of high standing as a surgeon, but was the present case a surgical case? ! Was it not a pathological case? Dr. Lynch and Dr. Mercer were not suri geons, but pathologists, and each had told the jury that from his observations he could give no other explanation than that the injuries on the face were caused by a blow or blows. Now the suggestion was that there might have been a fall or falls. Again he would point out to the jury that the accused had his opportunity in Auckland when the police interviewed him to give a full explanation. Of course he said he was not there with Mrs. Horton. If the jury found that to be untrue and that the accused knew Mrs Horton had had falls, he could have explained the whole thing to the detective-sergeant then, but, as far as his Honour could understand, the first suggestion about falls had arisen in the Supreme Court. His Honour discussed the possible cause of the injuries, and asked the jury if it was reasonable to conclude that those injuries, were caused by a fall or falls.

The legal definitions of murder and manslaughter were then traversed by his Honour, who said that if a man assaulted a woman suffering from some disorder, and by the assault hastened her death, he would be guilty of murder or manslaughter, but if he assaulted her with the intention of rape, and that assault caused death, he was guilty of murder and not manslaughter.