BOOKMAKING CHARGE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22744, 3 December 1935, Page 3

BOOKMAKING CHARGE

APPEAL BY THE POLICE CASE REMITTED TO MAGISTRATE As the result of an appeal which was heard by Mr Justice Kennedy in the Supreme Court yesterday, the case in which Walter Richard Sainsbury, a hairdresser, was recently charged with carrying on the business of a bookmaker is to-be remitted to the magistrate. When the case was heard in the Police Court the information was dismissed by the magistrate on the ground that the evidence was insufficient to warrant a conviction, but the police appealed against this decision, claiming that it was erroneous in point of la\\'. At the Supreme Court hearing yesterday it was agreed by the parties that, under the terms of the Gaming Act there should have been, on the evidence, a presumption of guilt and that the defendant should have been given the opportunity of rebutting this presumption.

Mr ¥. B. Adams appeared for the police, and Mr E. J. Anderson for Sainsbury. Mr Adams stated that it was common ground that the decision appealed from was erroneous and ought to be reversed. The case had resolved itself merely into an omission to consider section 4 of the Gaming Act, 1920. Even if there might have been some reference to the section, which counsel doubted, it had certainly not been brought home to the mind of the magistrate, with the result that he had igiven a judgment which he would not have given had the section been before him. Counsel gathered from the police and from Mr Anderson that the question of allowing evidence by the defendant to rebut a presumption that should have been reached on the evidence had not been dealt with at all. The proper course, Mr Adams suggested, was to remit the case to the magistrate for the completion of the hearing, so that Mr Anderson might have the opportunity to produce evidence to show that his client was not carrying on the business of a bookmaker. Mr Adams went on to refer to the evidence, which, he stated, was sufficient to establish under the Act that the defendant was carrying on the business of a bookmaker. In that case the magistrate should have said that the defendant was carrying on the business of a bookmaker unless he could exonerate himself by evidence to the contrary. Mr Anderson agreed that there had been an accidental omission to put the defendant in the witness box, and that the case should be remitted as suggested.

His Honor said that the determination in respect of which the case had been stated must be reversed. The matter would be remitted to the magistrate with the opinion of the court that there was sufficient evidence, until the contrary was proved, that the defendant had been carrying on the business or occupation of a bookmaker. His Honor told Mr Anderson that this would leave him free to call evidence, if he wished, to rebut the statutory presumption.