SUPREME COURT.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 8 February 1928, Page 3

SUPREME COURT.

WELLINGTON SESSION OPENED. (BY TELEGRAPH—PRESS ASSOCIATION.) WELLINGTON, Feb. 7. The quarterly sessions oi : the Supreme Court opened to-day. There. is a light calendar. Cyril Eugene Walsh, charged with the theft on December (5 of a wallet and £ls in notes, the property of George Beveridge, a. hotel barman, pleaded not guilty and said the wallet had been handed in him. The jury returned a. verdict of not guilty and the accused was acquitted.

ASSAULT ON A. WARDER. PRISONER’S DASH FOR, LIBERTY. AUCKLAND, Feb. 7. As a sequel to his escape from Mount Eden gaol on December 7, W illiam Henry Grant was charged at the Supreme Court to-day with assaulting warder John Booth. Prisoner was engaged in the bakehouse, and it was alleged he struck the warder on the head with a trestle of wood, rendering him unconscious

James Dickison, superintendent of the prison, who gave evidence, was questioned by tiic prisoner as to whether sufficient measures were taken to prevent escape from the bakehouse. The superintendent said there were no bars across the window of the bakehouse, but ho considered stiff wire was sufficient.

“Even a bird will peck at the wires of its cage,” commented Grant. Prisoner, in addressing the jury, sought to show it was not feasible that he should assault the warder, who made his round every half-hour, when he liad every facility to escape when the warder was absent from the locality, as there was only a thin wire between him and the yards. Giving what he described as a true version of the affair, Grant said that while another prisoner engaged in the bakehouse was asleep he climbed up on the window with a view to surmounting an intervening wall. "While on the point of liberty Booth arrived and said : “Who is up there?” Prisoner said he did ,not reply until Booth threatened to shoot, when prisoner fell on him. He then escaped, knowing Booth would raise the alarm.

In summing up, his Honour remarked that with some criminals vanity and the desire for publicity prompted them into the telling of fantastic stories. In any case accused had admitted that he was the) cause of the injuries to the warder, and that happening could scarcely be accidental. The jury returned a verdict of ‘‘guilty, but without malice.” Sentence was postponed until Saturday.

SENTENCES AT DUNEDIN. DUNEDIN, Feb. 7. . At the Supreme Court to-day, before Mr. Justice Sim, Charles Alexander Moore, who had pleaded guilty in the lower court to the theft of money from the dwelling of Annie R-. Irwin, was ordered to be detained for reformative treatment for a period not exceeding three years.

George Alexander Mason pleaded not guilty to charges of breaking, entering and theft at Alexandra, and of receiving stolen goods. Accused was found guilty of receiving and remanded for sentence.