SUMMING-UP “HOPELESS”

Greymouth Evening Star, 9 May 1936, Page 9

SUMMING-UP “HOPELESS”

LORD HEWART FREES PRISONER. LONDON, March 18. After describing a summing-up by the chairman of Maidstone Quartei Sessions as “quite hopeless, -the Loi d Chief Justice (Lord Hewart) yesterday ordered the immediate release ot a prisoner from the dock at the Com of Criminal Appeal. He was Walter Williams, 49, who had been convicted on a charge of receiving stolen goods, and 1 sentenced o two years’ hard labour. | Mr A. M. Galer. who had appeared for the prisoner on a dock brief at Maidstone, said that Williams, with another man, had been charged on two counts with housebreaking, of which he was found not guilty. There were also two .charges of receiving. His submission would be, said Mr Galer, that after the summing-up ot the Chairman (Sir Roger Gregory) the jury did not fully comprehend how each of the prisoners was affected. Lord Hewart, with whom was Mr Justice Macnaghten and Mr Justice du I.’arcq, interrupted -Mr Galer to observe that the Court had read the summing-up very carefully, and he asked counsel for the Crown if he. were prepared to defend it. > "J would try to,” replied counsel.. Lord' Hewart: Do you think it wise? Aller a short consultation, the Lord Chief Justice announced the Court’s decision. Williams, he said, was alleged to "have “a very bad record”; actually, he had been bound over in 1933.

The account of the summing-up to the jury was “really a remarkable document.” Although the learned Chairman had said that he was quot’ng from a well-known authority 'Harris’s "Principles of Criminal Law”), he had made an elementary mistake about the admissibility of statements by one prisoner against another. The “gem" of the document, said I ord Hewart, was a reference to the law about receiving stolen goods, in which the Chairman had told the jury taht it was sufficient evidence if the prisoner knew “at some time or other” that the goods had been stolen. It was elementary, said Lord Hewart, that there must be guilty knowledge at the time of receiving. Lord Hewart, in conclusion, said that the conviction must be quashed, and the prisoner discharged.