RETRIAL OF CROSS

Taranaki Daily News, 5 March 1935, Page 12

RETRIAL OF CROSS

CHARGE OF INDECENT ASSAULT. SECOND JURY EMPANELLED. The re-trial of Stanley Cross on charges of committing an indecent act and of indecently assaulting a girl aged 9 was commenced before Mr. Justice Blair in the Supreme Court at New Plymouth yesterday. The offences were alleged to have occurred at Marsland Hill, New Plymouth, on January 31. At the first trial last week the jury disagreed. Following the presentation of both sides and counsels’ addresses the case was- adjourned till this morning, when His Honour will deliver the summing up.

The jury comprised Messrs. S. Martint foreman), O. G. Lambert, A. S. Kirkland, A. C. Evans, J. R. Hamilton, W. Patten, J. .P. Donnelly, H. Gardiner, S. Billing, A. F. Courtney, R. L. Taylor and E. Waters. Mr. R. H. Quilliam conducted the prosecution and Mr. H. St. L. Reeves defended Cross, who pleaded not guilty.

The evidence followed the lines of that of the previous trial ,except that a small girl witness for the prosecution, unable previously to identify in court the man supposed to have committed the offences, selected Cross, in the dock, when asked •;to point to the man she thought had been responsible. Mr. Reeves in his address to the jury said that although the elder sister saw a man at the hospital the younger sister said there was no one there.. Nevertheless the younger sister was able to say what the man she had not seen was wearing. There was also the evidence of Crown witnesses that the person committing the crime wore a brown suit, although witnesses for the defence stated definitely that Cross was wearing a blue suit Similarly, evidence had been given that Cross was telephoning at the time which, if the prosecution’s story was to be believed, was almost impossible to separate from the time when the incidents occurred.

Mr. Quilliam stressed the value of proved facts as compared with suggestions by counsel, and emphasised tty® corroboration of the evidence of the two small girls on the outstanding facts. There had been definite evidence that the man had been' wearing a brown suit. Although the defence had made much of the non-likelihood of the culprit returning next day to the district of the occurrence, as was supposed to have happened, said Mr. Quilliam, people who committed such crimes were not to be regarded, in his opinion, as normal.

Then there was the statement of Cross to the police that he did not know what he was doing on Thursday because he had been drinking. Nevertheless his actions did not seem those of -a drunk man. Mr. Quilliam said the stories of Cross” movements told by both sides could work in together.