CRIMINAL TRIALS.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume II, Issue 231, 3 September 1912, Page 2

CRIMINAL TRIALS.

fatal prize fight. Hamilton, Sept. 2. In the course of an address to the grand jury to-day >h. Jus! Ice Cooper •nade an impels anr referi-nm 1 to p. ’.:e fighting when speaking of the case against the young man Moore, charged with the manslaughter of a Macri at Taupiri as the result of a bare-knuckles fight for a wager, and who subsequently died. ILs Honout said prize fights, always unlawful in common law, were rendered unlawful by statute in New Zealand, and it was a definite criminal offence for anyone to take part in a prize fight . The law on the matter was definite. He considered it of such iinpcitance that he had decided to nut his opinions on the matter in writing. Hu Honour then read as follows: —

“When one person is indicted for inflicting personal injury upon another the consent of the person who sustained the injury is no defence tc the person who inflicts the injury it the injury is of such a nature or is inflicted under such circumst anecs that its infliction is injurious to the public as well us to the person injured. But the injuries given and ieceived in prize fights are injurious io the public, both because it: is against the public interests that the lives and health of combatants should be endangered by blows and because prize fights ate disordeily exhibitions and mischievous on many obvious grounds. Therefore the consent of parties to blows which they mutually receive does not prevent those blows from being assaults : and in my opinion this principle of the law is not confined to prize fights, for every fight in which the objectand interest of each of the cc.nibi'.tants is to subdue the other by violent blows is or has a direct tendency :■.) a bleach of the peace, and it mn.‘ters not whether such fight be a hostile fight begun and continued in anger or a prize fight for a money or other advantage.’’ Morgan Patupatu pleaded guilty to forging a cheque for £7O. He was admitted to probation for a year, and ordered to pay £.5 and Crown expenses. Harry Feltrim Fagan, charged with the theft of a cheque for £l3 seven years ago, was found not guilty.