EVIDENCE AND PRIVILEGE

Feilding Star, Volume 7, Issue 2303, 4 September 1929, Page 7

EVIDENCE AND PRIVILEGE

ARGUMENT IN COURT

That if a man is charged with a crime lie should have the advantage of all the testimony in. his favour as well as the disadvantage of ail the evidence that tells against him, was the tenor of a claim made at the To Awamutu Magistrate’s Court during tlie hearing of a charge against a Ngalniipe farmer and liis wife,- tiiiiuei* the Child "Welfare Act, alleging wilful neglect ol' -a lioy licensed out to them. . Mr Prestou, for defendants, formally objected -to the sparseness of the information m the charge, and to the refusal of the police to give details The Magistrate said he would hear the evidence, and if he thought the deuce was prejudiced by the withholding of information in the hands of the police lie would allow an adjournment.

Counsel claimed that his client 5 were prejudiced by not having specific acts stated in the charge. The one idea of the police, he said, seemed to be -to> gefc n conviction irrespectivel of fairness to the defendants.

Tlie Magistrate: If you had had a.j much experience of the police as I have you -wouiid not talk that sort of nonsense. He said he considered the istatenients of witnesses in the hands of the police were privileged statements by the principals could be perused at police headquarters, but counsel could hardly require tlie police toi make out copies and send them forward.

After hearing a good deal of evidence lor the prosecution the Magistrate dismissed the case without calling upon the defence. He said the principal witness, tlie. boy himself, had changed his statements, and there waij- no evidence to show that either of the defendants had wilfully " neglected him.