DYING WOMAN’S EVIDENCE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 86, Issue 226, 25 September 1942, Page 3

DYING WOMAN’S EVIDENCE

QUESTION FOR COURT OF APPEAL (P.A.) Wellington, Sept. 24. The Court of Appeal was engaged to-day in hearing a case stated by Mi. Justice Kennedy for its opinion’ pursuant to Section 442 of the Crimes Act, 1908, and arising from the prosecution of Henry Arthur Hirt, convicted at the July sittings of the Supreme Court, Dunedin, on a charge of unlawfully using an instrument with an attempt to procure a miscarriage of Gladys Agnes Short. Accused was arrested at his rooms in Dunedin in May last. A room in an adjoining ward, in which Short was in bed. was declared as a Magistrate’s Court and her deposition taken. She died on May 18. At the trial objection was made that accused’s solicitor, George Tyrrell Baylee, did not have a full opportunity of cross-ex-amining witness. Her deposition was admitted not as a dying declaration, but under Sections 172 and 173 of the Justice of Peace Act, 1927. Questions for the opinion of the Court are whether her deposition was properly admitted in evidence, and. if not, what course should have been taken. The case is proceeding.