SUPREME COURT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23326, 19 October 1937, Page 6

SUPREME COURT

CRIMINAL SESSION OPENED CHARGES OF GREAT GRAVITY “Although the list of cases is not a long one, it includes charges of great gravity,” said his Honor Mr Justice Kennedy in his charge to the grand jury at the opening of the criminal session at Dunedin yesterday. The charges involved murder, attempted murder, assault causing actual bodily harm, breaking and entering and theft, receiving stolen goods knowing them to have been dishonestly obtained, the theft of money as a servant, making false entries with intent to defraud, and a number of other charges. A husband was charged with murdering his wife by discharging a shotgun into her body. His Honor reviewed the evidence that would be called, and said that no doubt the grand jury would find there was a charge to be answered. The charge of attempted murder with a number of other charges arose from an occurrence by night in which two Maoris were involved. After detailing the charges on the same indictment, his Honor said the evidence would show that one Maori went to the home of the other to which his former housekeeper had •moved with her belongings. There had been a struggle in which a gun was discharged and a slasher used. Nobody had the right to go to another person’s home and create a disturbance. “A woman who has been acting as housekeeper to a man may decide when she shall* leave him if she wishes to, and where she will live,” his Honor said. “A disappointed man has no right in law to go to her new home and smash up what he may. If a gun is discharged to frighten him, it is his duty to go away, and he has no right to wait about and set upon the man whose hpuse it is.” If the jury considered where the assault took place, what weapons were used and who began the trouble, his Honor thought that it would find sufficient evidence to warrant the accused standing his trial on all charges. Three men were charged In consequence of the disappearance of a quantity of rabbit skins from a city store. One was charged with breaking and entering and the theft of the skins, and the other two with receiving stolen goods. The latter were fellow boarders with the first accused, and evidence would be brought to show that they went to a hut possessed by the first accused and procured two bags of skins, which they attempted to sell. The final charge was against an officer of a friendly society, who was charged with stealing from the funds of that society and making false entries in a balance sheet with intent to defraud. THE GRAND JURY

The following grand Jury was empanelled;—Arthur Joseph Allen, Douglas Reid Anderson, William Douglas Anderson, George William Jackson Bell, Walter Palmer Birchell, John Black, Harold Booth, Charles Melville Bruce, Lloyd Stanley Brundell, Stuart Peter Cameron, Edward George Couper Albert George Culbert, Henry Smciaff Cunningham, Francis V. Drake, Albert Glue, Joseph Longhurst Gregory, Stanley Blackburn Jeffs Frank Leonard Lawrence, Herbert Edgar Lyon, William A. M'Queen, Cohn R. Nicolson, James Linster Passmore, John Reid Rodgerson Cecil Jose:sph Rackley. Mr A. J. Allen acted as bills were returned in all cases ’