WOMAN ACQUITTED ON MANSLAUGHTER CHARGE

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19236, 25 November 1930, Page 13

WOMAN ACQUITTED ON MANSLAUGHTER CHARGE

Per Press Association. NEW PLYMOUTH, November 24. The death of a Maori child, aged sixteen months, at Ketemarae Pa, near Hawera, on October 26, resulted in a charge of manslaughter against a Maori woman aged forty, before the Chief Justice to-day. She was acquitted by the jury. The charge was previously murder, but the grand jury reduced it to manslaughter. The story told by witnesses was that Mahere adopted the child of a sick relative and kept it in a whare with her own three children. The children caused the baby to cry. Mahere slapper} it to make—it stop crying. The child continued to cry, and Mahere admitted that she punched it on the chin. She said the child would not wake up, so she threw water over it. Help was summoned, and a doctor found the child dead. Mr L. A. Taylor, for the defence, put Mahere in the box. She told her story weeping. Summing up, the Chief Justice said there never had been any suggestion that Mahere struck the child with an intention to harm it. The jury returned in half an hour with a verdict of not guilty.