SEAMAN'S PLEA: ALLEGES POLICE PERSECUTION
(P.A.) WELLINGTON. This Day. Asserting that he was the victim of persecution, James Newton Keenan, aged 37, a seaman, who pleaded not guilty to a charge of theft and conducted his own defence in the Supreme Court, was found not guilty by the jury and discharged.
A taxi-driver, Francis John Brown, in evidence, said Keenan hired his cab on June 19. There were three other people in the cab, a young woman accompanied by John Hughes and an unknown man, referred to throughout as McGillivray. Brown stated that Keenan had asked him if he were interested in American cigarettes. Brown had replied in the affirmative and had subsequently given McGillivray £24. McGillivray had gone into a building and that was the last witness saw of him. Keenan and witness had entered the building to look for McGillivray, but the search was unsuccessful. Keenan, in evidence on his own behalf, said that when McGillivray had gone into the building with Brown’s .£24, he had also taken £2 10s of Keenan’s own money to buy cigarettes. “I myself lost money to McGillivray,” said Keenan. “I have been five weeks on remand over this. I have lost my job and lost the money I had on the ship—-£3O or £40 — through the persecution of the police.” “You are a man of parts,” said Mr Justice Cornish to Keenan after the jury had announced its verdict. “If you get stuck into good useful jvork for a year or two, people will stop suspecting you. It’s no use being suspected ail the time.”
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Bibliographic details
Greymouth Evening Star, 22 July 1947, Page 6
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263SEAMAN'S PLEA: ALLEGES POLICE PERSECUTION Greymouth Evening Star, 22 July 1947, Page 6
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