A MAORI TRIED BY HIS PEERS.

Colonist, Volume VIII, Issue 799, 23 June 1865, Page 4

A MAORI TRIED BY HIS PEERS.

The Otago Daily Times of 9th June, has the following account of a trial of a Maori by a jury of his own countrymen:—

A Maori jury sat in the Supreme Court yesterday ; this being the firsfc time aboriginal natives have so. served in Otago Province. The prisoner "Te Tira, was indicted for assaulting Andrew Pori, another Maori, at the Kaik near Moeraki, on the 20th March; •there being three counts, charging respectively that the intent was to kill, to do grievous bodily harm, and to wound. The Maoris afc tho Kaik were threshing with a steam machine, four horses being used as motive-power, and Tira being their driver. Pori, who had been opening sheaves on tlie top of a stack, for the purpose of feeding tho machine, jumped down, and frightened tho horses ; a dispute arose ; Tira ran and picked up a hatchet, and during a struggle, he struck Pori with the back of ifc on his forehead, thus inflicting a wound which proved to be but slight. There were seventeen Maoris summoned, they being all who were returned as capable of serving as jurors, to be found within a radius of twenty miles of fche Resident Magistrate's Court —that being the area prescribed by the Jury Law Amendment Act, which enables a Maori charged with an outrage upon a Maori to claim to be tried by his countrymen. The prisoner, who was defended by Mr. W. W. Wilson, " challenged" one of those whose names were drawn. The usual form of oath was administered to the jurors; the Rev. Mr. Remenschneider, missionary to the natives, who acted as interpreter, stating that all who were in the box professed Christianity. The Court, was crowded, to witness the novel spectacle of a jurybox so occupied. The conduct of the jurors was mosfc exemplary, as regarded gravity and attention to the evidence. One juror was tempted to smile during the trial; bufc the elderly Bartolomu, who was the Foreman, saw it, and in a dignified way checked, by his look and his raised hand any repetition of levity. When Mr. Wilson rose to cross-examine the prosecutor, the Judge took a short way of preventing the jurors being influenced by the arts of Counsel. His Honor directed the Interpreter to tell the jurors that they were to attend to what the witnesses stated, but that " they were not to believe what was said by the lawyers on either side." This saved the trouble of philosophising to the natives respecting the " license of counsel;" bufc the form of the caution was certainly curt and not complimentary. The jury took a not unnatural firsfc view of the duties of their new position ; for when they returned into Court, after consulting together, old Bartolomu earnestly addressed the Interpreter, who explained that they desired " to give reasons" for the decision to which they had como. In fact, they found the prisoner Guilty of unlawfully wounding only; and the Judge, who said that they had done rightly, sentenced the prisoner to twelve months' imprisonment, with hard labor.