PERSONALITIES AT TRIAL

Taranaki Daily News, 25 May 1934, Page 11

PERSONALITIES AT TRIAL

WHO'S WHO IN COURT. COUNSEL AND LAW OFFICERS. PEN SKETCHES OF FIGURES. Not the least interesting aspect of the trial of William Alfred Bayly, who / stands in the dock at the Supreme Court at Auckland charged with double murder, is the assemblage of people eminent in the law, detection of crime and in medicine. Personal sketches of a number of them with the object of conveying some idea of who is who in the case, and what manner of men are they who are charged with the duty of seeing that justice is given with an even hand. / The presiding judge, Sir Alexander Herdman, or, as he is officially designated when on the Bench, Mr. Justice Herdman, has directed the jury at many important criminal trials during a score of years. He asks few questions in Court, but watches closely in an almost motionless attitude, his eyes roving from counsel to witness, and from jury to prisoner. Mr. V. R. Meredith, who is leading for the Crown, has conducted all the major criminal’ prosecutions at Auckland for many years. He is a man of genial personality, and one who has been rarely known to lose patience even when a witness proves either dull or deliberately uncomprehending. He seldom raises his voice above conversational ,;L tope, and a characteristic posture is his T habit of standing with one foot on a chair and leaning forward to emphasise a point with his pinc-nez. His opponents at the Bar have frequently paid tributes to his scrupulous fairness. Mr. Meredith is as well known in sport as in the law. He bulks large in Rugby football circles. He was a great player in his younger days, and has had a share in selecting All Black touring sides—indeed, he .is still on the New Zealand selection committee—and has reappeared as sole Auckland selector. He knows his footballers as surely as he does his law. ’ YOUNG ASSISTANT PROSECUTOR. Mr. Meredith has a very young and able barrister associated with him. He is Mr. F. McCarthy, L.L.M., who is in Mr. Meredith’s office. Not yet 30, he has had a very good career at Auckland University College. A keen debater, he is known for his waggish wit. He is a good cricketer and is found in season “behind the sticks” for Eden club. An i eccentricity is his insistence on wearing black socks for the game. In Rugby football, too, he is widely known and wears the jersey of Grammar Old Boys. On the other side of the table are Mr. E. H. Northcroft and Mr. L. P. Leary, / who are defending Bayly. Mr. Northcroft has the reputation of being a penetrating cross-examiner and is a man who has a head for the- minutest detail. He seeks to convince by cold logic and fact rather. than to dazzle by oratory, and has appeared in many important trials, both civil and criminal. He is an old boy of Wellington College. His recreations are golf and acquatics, his fine first-class keel yacht Ilex being as much a part of the Waitemata Harbour as the water on which she cruises. Mr.-, Northcroft has served for years a flagofficer of the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron. He soldiered in the Great War as a colonel in the N.Z.F.A. and was decorated with the D.S.O.

Mr. Leary, junior counsel for the defence, is recognised by his fellow practitioners as an able . barrister with Ja. brilliant turn of . wit He studied law at Victoria College, Wellington, and kept to his books with such : diligence that his eyesight almost failed and he had to write some of his final papers with his eyes shut,'a method which he recommends as admirable exercise in brevity. Mr. Leary is well-known to the public as the author of two very fine musical plays, “Tutankhamen” and the “Abbess of Whitby,” which are among the best productions the Auckland Amateur Operatic Society has staged. Mr. Leary was an officer in the Royal Field Artillery in the war and won the Military Cross. His hobbies are tennis, gardening and occasional' literary work. SOLDIER-DETECTIVE. A witness who will figure prominently in the case for the prosecution is Detective T. W. Allsopp. He it was who, with Detective T. Sneddon, undertook the investigations at Ruawaro from the first, and carried the inquiry through to the point where the police considered they had a case against Bayly in respect of both Lakeys, Detective Allsopp, who is an Englishman, was a sergeant in the Coldstream Guards during the war. He saved the life of an officer in the 1916 attack on Gouzeaucourt, and a treasured possession is a handsome inscribed cigarette case given him by the officer. The detective has a wonderful memory, and in the Lower Court hearing he stood seven hours in the witness box 'andat no time referred to his notebook to recall dates or details of conversations. Mr. Allsopp and Mr; Sneddon were really the formulatprs of the burning theory.. . . ' Notable among the expert witnesses are Dr. W. Gilmour, pathologist at the Auckland Hospital, and Dr. P. P. Lynch, who holds a similar appointment in Wei? lington. Dr. Gilmour is a . dour little Scotsman who has given evidence in many criminal trials. He is cold and deliberate, entirely matter-of-fact, and speaks broad Scots. On the other hand, Dr. Lynch'infuses some colour into his testimony, and is almost whimsical. < ' And what of the central figure—Bayly? He looks just his 28 years, and is slight of build, dark, and sallow complexioned. In the Magistrate’s Court he spent a good deal of the ten days’ hearing in rocking slowly back and forth in his chair. Now and then he would rest his head against the side of the dock, and to all intents and purposes would doze off for several minutes at a time.