CHARGE OF MURDER

Greymouth Evening Star, 30 July 1946, Page 3

CHARGE OF MURDER

ALLEGED STABBING OF SHIPMATE BRITISH SEAMAN IN COURT (P.A.). . AUCKLAND, July 29. . In. the Supreme Court this morning before Mr. Justice Callan and a jury, James Watson, aged 46, a seaman, was charged that on July 9, being a British subject on a British ship, the motor-vessel Sussex, between Balboa and Auckland, he murdered Peter King. Mr. H. Henry and Mr. K. Aekins appeared for the accused. The Crown Prosecutor (Mr. V. R. Meredith) presented the case for the Crown. Mr. Meredith described how some members of the crew, including the accused and Peter King, were drinking together on the night of July 8. He said Watson was seen to push King into a sitting position on a bunk. He got a sheath knife from a locker, lifted King’s arm over his head, and ran the knife into his ribs. King was carried on deck and laid on a hatch, and when Watson followed one man knocked him down dnd another man took the knife away. In spite of all that could be done King died within a short space of time.

Mr. Meredith explained that if a man did bodily injury to another, knowing that it was likely to cause death, and reckless of whether it did or not, he was guilty of murder. A man was presumed to intend the natural consequences of his own act. When a man went to another man’s locker, got a'knife and unsheathed it, pushed his victim on to a bunk, lifted his arm above his head, exposing the most vital place, and then plunged the knife in in the region of the heart, it was difficult to suggest that he did not intend to kill or to do grievous bodily harm, reckless of whether death followed or not. Two grounds on which a man could be excused in such a case were extreme provocation or self defence, but those grounds were not available here. King the accused should have had no quarrel whatever. ’

The evidence was being heard when the hearing was adjourned.