CRIMINAL SITTINGS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 12604, 6 March 1903, Page 6

CRIMINAL SITTINGS.

(Per United Press Association.) INVER CAE GILL, March 5. At tho Supreme Court, Carl Hertz was acquitted of an attempt to commit an unnatural offence, also of indccently assaulting a boy in a . country hotel. Accused, who was undefended, gave c-vidence that after playing cards and drinking with the landlord and others ho went to a room shown him by the landlord, in which the letter's two boys occupied a bod. Having taken too much liquor, he stumbled in tnkiug off his clothes, and fell across tho boys' bed, and they thereupon raised an outcry. The verdict was received with applause. The charge against Eosannah M'Coy, of alleged stealing oE £21 from a home she visited, was not finished when the court rose.

HOKITIKA, March 5. The Supreme Court sessions opened today before tho Chief Justice, who congratulated the district on the .comparative absenco of crime.A young man, charged with breaking and entering, came up for sentence, being fined £10, or four months' imprisonment. Ah Ching was found " Guilty" of an unnatural offence. Sentence was deferred. This concluded tho criminal business. In tho oivil jurisdiction case Hislon v. tho Minister of Mines, a motion to set asido a filing of a claim for compensation in connection with the proclamation of tho Inangabua, River as a tailing sits on tho ground that seotion W of "Tho Public Works Act, 1891," did not apply. The case is proceeding. BLENHEIM, March 5. The sittings opened this morning before Judge Denniston. There are only two criminal cases on tho calendar. On a charge of forgery, John Harris Smith, of Nelson, was sentenced to six months; Mary Ellon Solitia, larceny, was admitted to probation for 12 months; John Eckford, jetting firo to a tent at Top Yalloy, received throo months.