BOAKES ACQUITTED

Evening Star, Issue 19722, 24 November 1927, Page 3

BOAKES ACQUITTED

JURY’S BRIEF RETIREMENT JUDGE APPROVES VERDICT RE.MAM) ON MINOR CHARGE. [Pub United Press Association.] CHRISTCHURCH, November 23. The trial ot Charles .William Boakcs ou a charge of murdering Ellen Gwendoline Jsobo) iScarlf at Bunvood on or abo;it June 15 last was concluded at the Supremo Court to-day. The hearing of the evidence was concluded yesterday, ami to-day counsel delivered their addresses to tho jury, and His Honor Mr Justice Adams summed up. His Honoi referred to tho danger of bias in the minds of jurymen from the unhealthy and mischievous publication of rumor and conjecture concerning the case. The evidence, he said, was all circumstantial. They must bo satisfied that the facts were inconsistent with any other rational conclusion than that the person charged was the guilty person before they could bring in a verdict of guilty. There was no evidence before the court of intimacy .between tho prisoner and the woman Scarff,. although counsel for the defence had conceded that there might have been intimacy.

His Honor reviewed at length the events between June 8 and Juno 15. “You saw King and heard his evidence,” said His Honor, “ and ' you might conclude that you would not hang a cat on any evidence he might give?’ He warned the jury that if they believed be bad lied in court they must not assume, therefore, that he spoke the truth on tho former occasion. The jury must close their eyes ami minds to any statements made by King outside of the witness box. They must make their minds a blank as to wbat be said in the Magistrate’s Court. The judge, referring to the main proved facts of the case, said the jury would find it impossible to show Boakcs’s direct connection with those facts. There was nothing to justify tho attaching of a sinister meaning to interviews between Boakcs and tho girl, between Juno 8 and June 11. He referred also to the evidence of the boy Mugford that tbo man be saw at the scene of the murder was a smaller man than Boakcs. “There is no fact in connection with the spanner which identifies it as having been in the possession of accused. You must fill up some gaps in the evidence by reasonable inferences or guess work before you arc able to say there is any proved connection between the accused and the military overcoats. I have been asked to rule that there is no evidence to go before you at all, and to make a direction to you to that effect. I confess I have had scene hesitation in the matter, but I have decided to leave it to vnu,”

The jury, after n retirement of less than an hour, returned a verdict of not guilty. The Judge said lie entirely approved of the jury’s verdict. On the minor charge of having supplied a noxious drug Boakes was remanded till November .10, hail of £IOO being given in his own recognisance.