MURDER CASE FAILS

Taranaki Daily News, 15 November 1934, Page 8

MURDER CASE FAILS

HUSBAND REFUSES EVIDENCE. EXEMPTION RIGHT UPHELD. “My lord, I have lived happily. with my wife throughout our married life,’ and I do not ■ wish to give evidence against her.” This statement (says the London Daily Telegraph) was made, at the Old Bailey by a husband when asked if he-desired to give evidence against his wife, who had been charged with the murder of their infant son. The accused woman, Mabel Gladys Dodimeade, 36, of Whitchurch Gardens, Edgware, pleaded not guilty. Mr. Gerald Dodson, prosecuting described the case as a distresring one, Mrs. Dodimeade being a good wife and fond of her baby. She and her husband had been happily married for nine years and were in comfortable circumstances. The boy Keith was bom on June 20, and when she came back from the nursing home on July 6 Mrs. Dodimeade seemed low-spirited and depressed. On July 17 the husband came home and found his wife lying on the bedroom floor with the gas turned on from a gas stove. The window was open, and this, said Mr. Dodson, might throw some light on her mentality. The husband rushed out with the child and called a doctor, but the baby was dead. Mrs. Dodimeade was also suffering from gas poisoning and melancholia. She came into the room while the doctor was attending to the child, but did not speak. She had a vacant look and did not seem to realise where she was. Afterwards she said she had been feeling strange for the past three or four days. Dr. Edward Vincent Frederick gave evidence that on July 18, when she was admitted to hospital, Mrs. Dodimeade was, in his opinion, suffering from slight coal gas poisoning and was very depressed. Mr. Justice Atkinson: Do you think she was sane when she was brought in? —No, she was abnormal. At the close of the case for the prosecution the trial took an unusual and dramatic turn. Mr. Thomas Dawson, defending, submitted that as the husband had declined to give evidence there was no evidence to go to the jury that Mrs. Dodimeade 1 had murdered the chilfi. Anything raid in opening based on the probable evidence of the husband must, he suggested, be now disregarded, and the case should be withdrawn from the jury. Mr. Justice Atkinson agreed. “You appreciate,” he told the jury, “that by our law neither husband nor wife is a compellable witness against the other. If they do not choose to give evidence the law does not make them do so, and it is a very humane law. “You must put out of your mind the opening properly made by counsel, and I direct you that there is not sufficient, evidence of murder, and that you should return a verdict of not guilty.” Tlie jury accordingly found Mrs. Dodimeade not guilty. 1