INTOXICATED DRIVERS

Greymouth Evening Star, 19 April 1938, Page 7

INTOXICATED DRIVERS

WHO SHOULD ADJUDICATE ? POLICE PREFER MAGISTRATE [fep. press association.] DUNEDIN, April 18. Strong objection to an application by the police that a case in which a man was charged with being intoxicated while in charge of a cai’ should be held over until a Magistrate was on the Bench was taken by Mr. O. G. Stvens, counsel for the accused, in the Magistrate’s Court to-day. The Court was presided over by two Justices of the Peace, Messrs. G. Stratton and W. Murphy, who announced after hearing Mr. Stevens that they had decided to proceed with the case. When the case was called, SeniorSergeant Clausen said he had received departmental instructions to apply for a formal remand until a date that would enable the case to be determined before a Magistrate. “There are other cases of the same type,” Mr. Stevens said, “and I object very strongly to the application made by the police. The man concerned in the first case lives at Stirling. He spent Saturday night in the colls, and he is entitled to have his case dealt with at the first available sitting of' the Court. In another case that will come before the Court, the accused man lives 250 miles away from Dunedin in Central Otago, and if he has to make another trip to Dunedin at a later date it will mean serious inconvenience to him. I submit that you have jurisdiction to deal with these matters. Yon are entitled to deal with them, and it is highly, improper for the department to make any application to have them held over. If you are not to be entitled to adjudicate in such cases, then that right should be taken away, as it was conferred, by statute. The suggestion underlying the application made by the police is that you are incompetent to deal with cases of this kind; but until the Crown is prepared to Take away the right that has been conferred on Justices of the Peace, I submit that they are bound to deal with matters of this kind.” Senior-Sergeant Clausen: It is not my duty to argue the matter. I dissociate myself entirely from any suggestion of incompetence. I am making the application entirely on behalf of the department. Mr. Stevens: I do not suggest that the senior-sergeant is acting without instructions. Mr. Stratton intimated that the Bench intended to deal with the cases.

TWO DRIVERS CONVICTED. DUNEDIN, April 18. Two cases of drivers intoxicated while in charge of motor-cars were dealt with in the Magistrate’s Court to-day, and there was also an associated charge preferred against the owner of one of the cars of aiding and abetting the driver in the commission of the offence. Fines were imposed in each case by the presiding Justices, Mr. G. Stratton, J.P.. and Mr. W. Murphy, J.P. Alexander Stirling Barron pleaded guilty to having been intoxicated in charge of a car at Green Island, and was fined £l5. His licence was suspended for a year, the suggestion being made by the Bench that he might apply for another licence in six months. In the case in which William Bernard Stanley Agnew pleaded guilty to a similar offence, Senior Sergeant Clausen said that, shortly after midnight on Saturday two traffic inspectors came up behind a small car which had stopped on the road a mile north of Waihola and saw a young man and a young woman emerge from it. They approached the inspectors’ car and asked for a lift to Dunedin. On examination it was found that the driver of the car was drunk, and that the owner was sitting in the back seat. Harold James Connely, owner of the car Agnew was driving, pleaded not guilty to a charge of aiding and abetting in the commission of the offence. Senior Sergeant Clausen said that in such a case the responsibility lay heavily on the owner of the car, who was liable to half the penalty that could be imposed upon the driver. Accused was convicted and fined £lO. “We think you are as bad as the other fellow, if not worse,” said Mr. Stratton.

AUTOMOBILE ASSN. VIEWS. The opinion that persons l charged with being intoxicated while in charge of motor vehicles should be dealt with only by magistrates and not by justices of the peace was expressed by Mr A. E. Ansell at a meeting of the Automobile Association (Otago) last week. Mr Ansell made particular reference to a recent easel at Blenheim where justices of the peace refrained from .imposing a term of imprisonment on a, driver for a fourth offence because he was about to take part in local body elections 1 , and the following motion, which he moved, was carried unanimously: That the South Island Motor Union should be requested to co-operate with the North Island Motor Union in joint representations to the Government drawing its attention to the necessity for such legislation or regulations as will ensure that persons charged with being intoxicated 'while in charge of motor vehicles shall be dealt with by stipendiary magistrates. “Quite recently, after a week-end, it made one feel despondent to open a newspaper,” Mr Ansell said, when introducing the subject. “After all our efforts and the Government’s efforts to stamp out or lessen the huge total of offences under this- heading there were six cases for the week-end from Christchurch alone. Most notable was a message from Blenheim, where a man who came before justices of the peace on a. fourth offence of being intoxicated while in charge of a motor-vehicle was not imprisoned because, in the opinion of the justices, d term of imprisonment would cause, him to suffer in view of approaching local body elections. I think it is scandalous that considerations of this kind should be allowed to enter into a judicial decision.” The president of the association, Mr p. W. Breen, said it was regrettable that accidents caused by drunken drivers were still on the increase, and it seemed that magistrates would have to deal with them, more drastically. It was not the danger to a drunken driver himself that .mattered so much as the menace to other users Af the road.

COLLISION SEQUEL TIMARU, April 19. “This is a serious offence and you’re fortunate that you’re not charged with a more serious offence, in that you might have killed someone in the other car,” said the Magistrate (Mr. Morgan), in the Police. Court, this morning, when Michail Joseph Brosnahan, single, labourer, 50, of Kerrytown, pleaded guilty, to intoxication when in charge of a car. He was fined £2O and his license was cancelled until June 1, 1939. He was ordered to pay the medical expenses. The charge was a sequel to a collision near Arowhenua on Saturday night, when Brosnahan veered into an approaching vehicle containing four passengers, one of whom was thrown through the windscreen, and suffered minor injuries. Brosnahan was injured also. Both vehicles were extensively damaged.

FINES AT AUCKLAND AUCKLAND, April 19. “If people go out to parties, and have been, they had better telephone for a taxi, and leave their cars behind them,” said Magistrate Hunt, at the Police Court to-day, addressing Hrary Patrick Carr, 27, engineer’s fitter, Huntly, who had been remanded after his arrest in Symonds Street early yesterday morning. The police said that Carr came originally from Gisborne, his parents being most respectable people. Counsel said taht Carr had gone to a party, and had two or three bottles of J-,eer. There was not question of any traffic collision. Carr was convicted and fined £35, in default two months’ imprisonment. His license was cancelled for twelve months.

John Edward King, 32, salesman, admitted intoxication while in charge of a car in France Street last evening. The police said that King was trying to start the car in the middle of the road.

King was fined £5O, in default three months’ imprisonment. His license was cancelled for two years.