SEVERE COMMENT BY MAGISTRATE

Southland Times, Issue 23306, 16 September 1937, Page 6

SEVERE COMMENT BY MAGISTRATE

FIVE MEN CHARGED WITH ASSAULT DELIBERATE UNTRUTHS ALLEGED (United Press Association) WELLINGTON, September 15. “It is obvious, of course, to any listener with the .slightest degree of intelligence that the two principal witnesses for the Crown have gone back on the information supplied and have deliberately told untruths in the witness box,” said Mr E. D. Moseley, S.M., in the Magistrate’s Court at Wellington today. “As far as a third witness is concerned she told a few truths but has concealed a great part of what she knows to be true. “The two principal witnesses, continued the Magistrate, “have suffered at the hands of third parties and are not prepared to tell the truth. The Court, therefore, is very much inclined to let them continue to suffer. Nevertheless, had the other evidence been strong enough, I would have committed accused for trial. It was not sufficiently strong, however, although there is very little moral doubt in my mind as to their guilt, or the guilt of some of them, and they were all together. Counsel, of course, would have argued that they were not all concerned but I would have held they were. DESERVED ALL THEY GOT “What I want to say to the principal witnesses is that in my opinion they deserve all they got and if they are likely to come before the Court again, either as witnesses or defendants, it will be very hard to convince the Court that they are telling the truth. I hope they leave the Court with the proper sense of how ashamed they ought to be of having gone into the witness box and lied a- they have done. “It is very seldom, fortunately, that one gets young men, presumably born in New Zealand, who so disgrace themselves and I hope their sense of disgrace will remain with them to the end of their days. Accused are discharged.” “If your Worship had not made these remarks it was my intention to ask you to read the statements made to the police by the two principal witnesses to satisfy you we were justified in taking action,” said Detective-Sergeant P. Doyle, who prosecuted. The Magistrate: You needn’t worry about that. I know the police do not take action without substantial reason. The case was one in which five young men were jointly charged on two counts with assault so as to cause actual bodily harm to Noel Percival Richards and George Richards. Accused were Samuel John Barrett, a motor mechanic, aged 22 years, Allan George Eagle, a timber worker, aged 22 years, John Ralph Cairncross, a glass beveller, aged 21 years, Edward Ernest Aitken, a timber worker, aged 20 years, and Neville Edward Gandy, a labourer, aged 22 years. The charges arose from a fight alleged to have taken place in a house in Stepney Place on the night of September 4.