THE WINTON CHILD MURDERS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 10424, 29 July 1895, Page 3

THE WINTON CHILD MURDERS.

' THE APPLICATION TO THE APPEAL COURT. (Per United Press Association.) ■Wellington, July 27. A motion foe leave to appeal in the case oE Regina v. Minnie Dean was argued in the Appeal Court to-day., AH the five judges ware present. Dr , Findlay appeared in support of the motion; Mr T. Macdonald (Crown prosecutor, Invercargill) and Mr Gaily (Crown proaecutor, Wellington) for the Crown. Dr Findlay, in opening the case, stated that he was unable to Support the first ground'of the motion. He could not contend that the evidence as to the infant Horntby ha' beon improperly admitted. He would contend, however, "that the evidence as to other infsnts and the finding of a skeleton at The Lareh'ss had been improperly admitted. He submitted that tho case of Makin v. the Attorney-general of New South .Wales, on the authority of which the evidence objected to had been admitted, did not apply. , That case had merely repeated what1 vras previously established, that evidence of the conduct of accused oa other occasions similar to that charged in the particular casa could be given to dispose of the suggestion that the particular act charged was accidental, or to rebut any other similar defence open to accused, i In the present casa the evidence had'been admitted professedly, to eiimiuate .the element of accident, but r.t the time of its admission there was no widenca of accident. It had not been suggeated that if Mrs Dean administered morphia to the child she had done it accidentally. The evidence: of Mrs Dean's dealings with other children was therefore not properly admissible to disgrove accident, and unless genuinely offered for that purpose could not be admitted merely to fitrergthen tho general evidenca against accused. To make'evidence of other cctg admissible they tnusb appear to bo part of a series of similar occurrences and ; to be. part of one scheme. In the present case the essentials of previous. occnriences were not sufficiantly similar: there was wanting the es'iential circumstance of the finding of the bodies of other children alleged to have been received by llts Dean, and in the case of the finding of thu skeleton of the child in the garden there was nothing to identify it in any way as that'of any child taken in by Mrs Dean. '

Dr Findlay1 concluded his argument shortly before 1 o'clock, when the courtfintiraated they did not desire to hear counsel for the Crown then, and if they required to hear them they would do so on Monday morning.