WHARF PURCHASES

Evening Post, Volume CXXXV, Issue 33, 9 February 1943, Page 4

WHARF PURCHASES

PRACTICE CONDEMNED

ENCOURAGEMENT TO CRIME

The practice of buying goods on the wharves and from ships—goods inferentially stolen or smuggled—was strongly condemned in the Supreme Court yesterday by the Chief Justice (Sir Michael Myers), who suggested that prohibitive legislation carrying severe penalties should be brought down to check what was a direct encouragement to crime. His Honour also said that even three disagreements by juries in one case did not necessarily impugn the honour of jurors generally. His Honour's remarks followed the announcement by the Crown Prosecutor, Mr. W. H. Cunningham, of a stay of proceedings in the prosecution of Robert James Smith, foreman stevedore, aged 39, who was charged on alternative counts of stealing and receiving two bolts of suiting material valued at £146 Is Id, the property of the Federal Steam Navigation Company. Smith was tried three times, and each time the jury disagreed. "The Sheriff has very properly brought before me a certain letter that he has received," said his Honour. "The Court, however, cannot inquire into what goes on in the jury room, but, I think in justice to jurors generally, I want to say that the mere fact of a disagreement in however plain a case, once, twice, or even thrice, does not necessarily involve a reflection upon the honesty or the honour of jurors generally. If, in any case—and I am speaking quite generally—a minority of two or even one may determine, however strong the evidence may be, to bring about a miscarriage of justice, it simply cannot be helped. It is better for the general.administration of justice that there should be an occasional miscarriage than that the Crown should appear, by a succession of retrials, to be striving unduly for a conviction. No doubt that is what influenced you, Mr. Crown Prosecutor, in a stay of proceedings. PUBLIC IMPORTANCE. "There is one point, however, of special public importance—importance to the community generally—that has come before the Court in this case, and I think it my bounden duty <to refer to it. It appears from the evidence that there is a practice on the part of shore workers to make purchases of property from wharves and ships and their precincts, from sailors and other persons who are unknown to the purchaser. "I need hardly point out, for it is obvious, that where persons endeavour to sell goods on the wharves in that way the primary inference is there that the goods are stolen or smuggled or both. The practice of making purchases in the way the evidence would show they are made on the wharves and on ships seems to me to be a direct encouragement to crime. The practice of making such purchases is obviously a pernicious one which should be sternly reprobated by the Harbour Board and shipping companies and, indeed, I suggest should be prohibited by legislation under severe penalties."