THE UNWRITTEN LAW

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22710, 24 October 1935, Page 16

THE UNWRITTEN LAW

AN UNSUCCESSFUL PLEA (Per United Press Association) PALMERSTON N., October 23. An attempt by counsel for the defence to introduce the plea of the unwritten law in the Symes shooting case met 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 found himself might have done exactly the same thing and taken a gun. His Honor: But you cannot as a barrister invito the jury to consider tho unwritten law. Counsel: I intend to put my plea in the words of Sir John Simon in an English case. His Honor: But Sir John Simon disclaimed that he pleaded the unwritten law. In any caso I don't intend to tell tho jury that they can consider the unwritten law in this country. To the jury counsel said: "If any one of you should find your wife carrying on in a compromising attitude with a man, you can say to them, ' Please don't,' and then you must turn on your heels and walk off. That is the law as it stands, but I don't subscribe to that attitude at all." He quoted Sir John Simon as follows:—"In regard to the unwritten law, I do not appeal to it. It is justice according to the law that I ask you to mete out to the defendant. It is, however, necessary for me to discuss the unwritten law. I sav that in a case where no other conceivable course is possible to save your wife, not indeed from unfaithfulness, but from the destruction of body and soul at the hands, not of an admirer, hut of a blackguard, no decent man could suggest that the duty of protecting your wife thereupon dissolved in the face of such a situation. There is no course, according to the preposterous law of this country, lint that the husband should then retire and leave his wife to her fate." Mr Justice Smith pointed out to the jury that the unwritten law was a negation 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 community would be a very unsafe place in which to live.