CASHEL STREET CASE.

Timaru Herald, Volume XCIV, Issue 14523, 19 August 1911, Page 2

CASHEL STREET CASE.

JACK ACQUITTED OF MURDER.

REARRESTED FOR PERJURS\

I Per Press Association. [ CHRJSTCHURCH, Aug. 18. Harry Alexander Jack was before the Supremo Court to-day, charged with the murder on February 7th of Ethel May Bradley. Evidence was led by the Crown Prosecutor, Mr Stringer, K.C., to much ! the same effect as that given at the previous sessions of tho Court, when Walter Richard Sadler was charged with the manslaughter of the woman. No evidence was called by the defence, but Mr S. G. Raymond, for accused, argued that there was no case to go to the jury. After hearing Mr Stringer in reply, Mr Justice Denniston, addressing tho jury, said that as thoy would doubtless have seen, the. Court of Appeal at its last sitting had quashed tho conviction of Sadler, who was indicted with the accused for having murdered tho woman. It was not thought advisable to publish the reasons for the judgment until the present case was concluded, as , some of tho observations might prejudice the trial. He would have been glad to refer to it in disposing of the present application, Tho ground of the judgment was that the evidence taken, though most strongly against tho accused, did not oxclude as a reasonable hypothesis for the woman's death the self-administration of poison by her. The only difference between the .. two cases was that, assuming Sadler's evidence to be true—and there was a great deal of evidence directly negativing his evidence on its most important point—there was nothing to exclude selfadministration, even supposing it had been taken while in Jack's company. As would bo seen when the reasons for the judgment of the Court of Appeal wero read, that Court held that there was both motive and opportunity for tho woman taking her own life. Ho had made these observations on tho assumption that tho case was put to the jury as a charge of murder, but in that case, as in tho case of Sadler, tho Crown had disavowed any intention of so putting it to them in tho opening, and intimated that ho would have put it to them also that he admitted that there had been no evidence to justify such a charge. He put it as lie had put it in the case of Sadler, that if either of the accused administered it. it- must have been an accidental administration of a drug intended to produce abortion. Of that there was not the slightest evidence. Ho nreferred, however, to put his direction on the ground taken by the Court of Appeal, that there was not proof of what the law called tho corpus delicti—that was tho fact that the poison was administered by some other person than the woman herself. Until such evidence was produced, either by direct evidence of administration -by * another or by such clear indirect evidence as would exclude any other reasonable hypothesis, including of course the hypothesis of self-administration, an : accused person could not bo called on t.-> answer the charge. He therefore directed the jury to find a verdict of not guilty. Addressing tho prisoner, His Honour said he was bound to point out that ho | would probably bo charged with another offence, of which he would hear later. The jury, without leaving the box, returned a verdict of not guilty. Jack, immediately after the case was rearrested by Detective Miller on a charge of perjury.