BRENNAN GUILTY

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20632, 13 August 1941, Page 2

BRENNAN GUILTY

NIGHT ENTRY PROVED | INJURIES IN FALL The jury which tried Harry Lewis Brennan in the Supreme Court, yesterday, on a charge of breaking and entering with intent to commit theft, took about one hour to reach a verdict of guilty. Brennan was stood down to receive sentence from Mr. Justice Northcroft to-day. The defence called only one witness, who deposed to the bad condition of the chimney at Brennan’s house and to-his own narrow escape from falling off,the roof in the way that Brennan claimed he had received his injuries, Mr. L. T. Burnard, for the accused, submitted that this evidence adequately supported the story told by Brennan, and that the Crown was asking the jury to assume too much when it alleged that because a man hai;l been injured in a woolstore, and Brennan had been taken to hospital suffering from injuries caused by a fall, Brennan must be the man who had entered the store. The Crown prosecutor, Mr. F. W. Nolan, pointed out that unless a thief were caught red-handed there was never any direct evidence of guilt. He was confident, however, that the jury wotild see the force of the indirect evidence brought against the accused. The evidence of Gibson certainly bore no . trace of having been invented. One of the factors which the jury would have to consider, moreover, was that only a man who had worked in the woolstore could have found his way through to the bulk store. His Honour’s Summing Up His Honour said that apparently there had been systematic stealing of tobacco, evidently by someone whose acquaintance with the building was such as to give him the confidence that led him to his fall. The man who had the fall had suffered grievous injuries, and the accused was shown to have suffered injuries consistent with such a fall. It was for the jury to say whether it was possible for the accused to have taken a fall at home without leaving some obvious signs of it on the ground at his home. The fact that he was not taken to hospital until the afternoon, when he told the detective-sergeant that his fall from his roof had occurred early in the morning, also should be considered. The whole circumstances seemed to suggest a desperate effort on his part to get fixed up without publicising his injuries. If the jury accepted Gibson’s evidence. however, it carried matters beyond the mere sphere of inference from the known facts, His Honouradded. The jury retired at 3.50 p.m. and returned an hour later with a verdict of guilty. The prisoner was stood over until 2.15 p.m.- to-day for sentence. .