RECORDER REBUKED.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 18941, 12 February 1925, Page 9

RECORDER REBUKED.

CHARGE TO GRAND JURY. RIGHTS OF NEWSPAPERS. (Received 9.35 p.m.) Renter. LONDON. Feb. TO. The Court of the King's Bench to-day discharged a rule which had been granted on Friday calling upon the editor and publishers of the Evening News to show cause why they should not be committed for contempt of Court for publishing a report of the Recorder's comments to the grand jury on the liobbs case. The Lord Chief Justice said it was too late in the day to argue that newspapers were not entitled to report charges to grand juries. It was a serious misfortune that such a.charge should have been delivered. It was long indeed since a Judge had prematurely expressed the opinion that the ultimate verdict of a potty jury should be of a particular kind. Newspapers' should not be punished for publishing an agency report which on the whole was fair and accurate. The Court made no order as to costs.

Sir E. E. Wild, K.C., Recorder of London, in charging the grand jury at the Old Bailey last week referred to the pending trial of William Cooper Hobbs on a charge of having received a cheque for £150,000 issued by Sir Hari Singh, the young Indian potentate, and stolen abroad. The Recorder said: "Three hundred thousand pounds may appear to you a large sum to pay for assailing Mrs. Robinson's virtue. Probably you think if farthings were substituted for pounds it would more appropriately represent the value of virtue, but that has nothing to do with us. The point is that Sir Hari Singh, for political or other reasons, was most anxious to avoid publicitv. These clever scoundrels played on the knowledge, and were able to obtain two cheques. I should sav there can be no doubt that Hobbs was a party to this gigantic fraud, perhaps one of the most monumental and most impudent in criminal history." The grand jury found a true bill against Hobbs.