UNWRITTEN LAW

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXV, Issue 266, 24 October 1935, Page 6

UNWRITTEN LAW

PLEA IN SHOOTING CASE ‘Wouldn’t You Have Done It?’ DISFAVOUR FROM BENCH (By Telegraph—Press Association.> PALMERSTON N. ( Oct. 23. An. attempt by counsel for the defence to introduce a plea of unwritten law in the Symes shouting case mqt with disfavour at the hands of Mr, Justice Smith in the Supreme Court Counsel suggested that anybody else in the position in which Symes had fouud himself might have done exactly the same thing and taken a gun. His Honour: But you cauuot m a barrister invite the jury to consider unwritten law. Counsel: I intend to put my plea in the words of Sir John Simon in an English case. His Honour: But Sir John Simon disclaimed that he pleaded unwritten law. In any case I don’t intend telling the jury that they can consider unwritten law in this country. To the jury, counsel said: “If anyone of you should find your wife carrying on in a compromising attitul* with a man, you can say to them: “Please don’t,’’ and then you must turn on your heels and walk off. That ia the law as it stands, but I don’t subscribe to that attitude at alh” He quoted Sir John Simon as follows: “As regards unwritten law, 1 do not appeal to it, as it is justice according to the law that I ask you to mete out to the defendant. However, if it is necessary for me to discuss and decide unwritten law, I say that in a case where no other conceivable course could possibly save your wife, not in- • deed from unfaithfulness, but from destruction of body and soul at the hands not of an admirer but of a blackguard, no decent man could »uggest that the duty of protecting your wife was thereupon dissolved. In fuco of such a situation there is no course, according to the preposterous law of this country, but that the husband should then retire and leave his wife to her fate.” Mr. Justice Smith pointed out to the jury that unwritten law was a negaion of the law under the protection of which the community was living. No individual could take the law into his own hands and apply force to avenge a wrong. He had to leave it to the State. If that were not so, the comnunity would be a very unsafe place to live in.