CRIMINAL APPEAL COURT

Greymouth Evening Star, 24 July 1945, Page 6

CRIMINAL APPEAL COURT

CHIEF JUSTICE’S SUPPORT. WELLINGTON, July 23. Gratification that what he had considered a blot on the administration ot justice in New a Zealand for many years was likely to be removed _ by the establishment of a court of crimInal appeal was expressed by tne Chief Justice (Sir Michael Myers) to-day in his charge to the grand jury at the opening of the. quarterly | criminal sessions of the Supreme Court. At the turn of the century, said his .Honor, a man named Beck was charged in England with serious offences. The case depended largely on evidence of identity. Beck was convicted and sent to prison. Subsequently it was found that he was entirely innocent. The evidence ol identity had been wrong. There was somewhat of an outcry, and a court of criminal appeal was established m jn New Zealand, in June, 1908, a year after the court of criminal appeal was established in England, two men were charged with murder, convicted of manslaughter, and sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment. They were, however, released in October, 1908. It transpired that they had been convicted on perjured evidence. The principal witness at the trial had been a youth who subsequently admitted he had kicked the victim to death. There was no court of criminal appeal in New Zealand, and the two men were apparently not even “pardoned,” but were simply given a remission of the unexpired portion of the sentence imposed on them for an offence that they had not committed. The men had been convicted on perjured evidence. That was another incident in the case which, in itself, if there had been a court of criminal appeal, would have enabled the court to redress the mischief caused by the conviction, either by quashing it or by ordering a new trial. „ _ . Before the English Court of Criminal Appeal Act. 1907, the Court of Crown Cases Reserved, as, it was called, could deal only with matters of law which arose in a criminal trial, and that was substantially the position in New Zealand to this day, but the court of criminal appeal was empowered to set a verdict aside if there was, on any ground, a miscarriage of justice. In every autonomous country under the British Crown except New Zealand a court of criminal appeal, according to the best of his information and belief, had been established. When he was at the Bar he had advocated over and over again the establishment of such a court, but nothing had been done. Since he had been on the Bench he had expressed his views strongly. Now at long last, after nearly 40 years l , he was glad to notice that apparently a court of criminal appeal bill was being introduced in Parliament. In some cases where the law m criminal cases had come before the Court of Appeal as a Court of Crown Cases Reserved, the Court had come to the conclusion that errors had taken place which might have led to a miscarriage of justice, but it had no power to do anything except affirm a conviction that was not altogether correct. Where application was made for the mercy of the Crown, the Governor-General-in-Council, which meant the Executive Government, might direct that a new trial be held. That meant that the Executive Council was put in the position of deciding something judicially. The Court of Appeal in some cases had considered' that it was justified in practically recommending that there should be a new trial. That, howl ever, was placing the Court in an in- ; vidious and embarrassing position, i as the answer might be made that it was trenching on the functions of the Executive Government.