USE OF INSTRUMENT

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 812, 5 November 1929, Page 16

USE OF INSTRUMENT

DRESSMAKER FOUND GUILTY An Auckland dressmaker, Jessie Morris, aged 40, was found guilty of unlawful use of an instrument on a married woman, at her trial before Mr. Justice Herdman in the Supreme Court yesterday. She was remanded until Friday for sentence. The offences were alleged to have taken place at accused’s shop in Upper Queen Street on April 29 and at a house in Symonds Street on May 6, the patient being a Kaeo woman, who said that she paid £5 for the operation. The woman said she did not know accused before going there. Another married woman from Kaeo, with whom the first witness declared she had visited Morris’s premises, denied that she knew accused or that she had any recollection of such a visit. Detective-Sergeant Doyle said that when he interviewed Morris she had denied all knowledge of the woman on whom the operation was supposed to have been performed. For the defence, Mr. Singer contended that the Crown case was based on the uncorroborated evidence of an accomplice, whose testimony must be regarded with suspicion. He suggested that the principal witness was protecting not only herself but someone who had befriended her. After 40 minutes’ retirement the jury returned a verdict of guilty.