SMITH GOES FREE ON CAPITAL COUNT.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18016, 29 November 1926, Page 15

SMITH GOES FREE ON CAPITAL COUNT.

GETS ONE YEAR FOR HAVING FIREARM WITH WHICH TO INJURE SELF. By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright. Aus. and N.Z. Cable Association. LONDON, November 28. A roar of applause, which was taken up outside the Maidstone Assize Court, greeted the verdict of not guilty of murder and manslaughter in the case in which Alfonso Francis Austin Smith, an ex-officer of the Army, was charged with killing John Adam Tytler Derham on August 12 by shooting him with a revolver at Stella Maris, a house in Tankerton. Whitstable. Smith pleaded guilty to being in possession of a firearm with intent to endanger his own life and was sentenced to a year’s hard labour. “Oh! How splendid!” cried Mrs Smith, who daily waited, a pathetic figure, in an ante-room, occasionally peering through the glass door at her husband in the dock. She added that she had a “ wonderful letter from him this morning. It means we shall be together again." Mrs Derham, wife of the dead man (of whom it. was stated earlier that Smith had been jealous and who was Shot, during a struggle between the parties at Stella Maris), said: “ I am deeply distressed, but I cannot help feeling grateful that a second life will not- be- taken."