SUPREME COURT.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXXVI, Issue 12025, 11 December 1901, Page 3

SUPREME COURT.

[by telegraph,] Wellington, Tuesday. At the Supreme Court, a youth named William Draper pleaded guilty to breaking and entering. He was remanded for the probation officer’s report. Dunedin, Tuesday. _ In Chambers to-day, Mr Justice Williams granted a rule nisi for a writ of prohibition in respect to the conviction of Pater Grant, this being a short process of appeal against the decision of Mr Carew, S.M., and two justices, convicting Grant of betting at tote odds. Grant has taken preliminary steps for an notion against the police for wrongful seizure and detention of his books in a recent raid.

Mr Justice Williams to-day quashed the conviction of William John Ireland by Mr C, C. Graham, 8.M., on a charge of vagrancy. Bis Honor said the evidence admitted in proof of a previous conviction was, of course, not legal evidence of the fact of conviction at all. It was simply hearsay upon hearsay. The only evidence the Magistrate had before him aa to a previous conviction was that of Detective Campbell, who stated that he had seen recorded in the Police Gazette a conviction of accused as an idle and disorderly person at Auckland, on the 20th September, 1866. If the case had been before a jury, it would have been the duty of the Judge, notwithstanding the evidence of Detective Campbell had been admitted, to have directed an acquittal.