HOLDING A SECRET COURT.

Otago Witness, Issue 956, 16 May 1889, Page 22

HOLDING A SECRET COURT.

Auckland, May 14. Quite a sensation was caused to-day by the publication by the New Zealand Herald of what

it calls a secret Court of Justlcj. The son of a wealthy citizen was arrested for larceny,, and the Herald asserts that the police convened a secret sitting of the court in the afternoon, when justices sat. A marked dSI note hid been found by the detective on the hoy ; but the Herald says when the case was called the inspector of police said he believed that the prosecutor did not wish to proceed farther, and the case was dismissed, matters being managed so well that the case did not appear in the papers. The I Herald concludes by demanding an inquiry, and says :— " If this is the way in which justice is to be administered in Auckland there is nothing to hinder the most serious crimes being compounded. It would seem if a man is arrested at any time daring the day or night he can, if he has influence or power enough, get a couple of justices to sifc, and if he has made the neceseary arrangements with the prosecutor and the police, the justices discharge the accused, and not a word of the matter- becomes known. We should hope that Auckland is quite singular in this style of administering justice". We should have hoped, too, that this was a singular instance, but the matter-of-course way in which the whole proceeding was gone about, and the fact that the circumstances have only, come out by mere accident after a considerable lapse •of time, must cause considerable misgiving, Messrs Ewington and King were not the justices of the day, and had no right to go up and constitute a court at the' behest of tho prosecutor and the father of the accused. We say, also, that it is very wrong for the police to consent to such a thing. The Government; are bound to make a thorough investigation into the whole circumstances, .which are scandalous in the extreme. The , justices hold they were justified in their action by the powers conferred upon them by the 60th and 61st sections of the Justices of the Peace Act." . ■'