JURY FINDS WOMAN NOT GUILTY OF MURDER OF CHILD

Wanganui Chronicle, 6 March 1947, Page 5

JURY FINDS WOMAN NOT GUILTY OF MURDER OF CHILD

(P.A.) Greymouth, March 4. After a retirement of over three and a-half hours a jury returned a verdict of not guilty when Margaret Campbell Doel, married, aged 21, was charged with murdering her infant male child at Greymouth on December 31. The trial lasted two days before Mr. Justice Kennedy.

Following her release, Docl was rearrested and charged with concealment of the birta of a child at Greymouth on December 31. On the application of the police she was remanded till Monday, bail being allowed in £5O in her own recognisance and one surety of £5O.

Allegations that the accused had strangled a child at birth in a lavatory at. the laundry where she was employed was made by the Crown Prosecutor, Mr. F. A. Kitchingham, who said that in a statement to the police, following the arrest at Auckland on February 1, accused had admitted giving birth to a child and tying a strip oi linen around its neck with the intention to cause death. Later the same day she had purchased a salt bag and therein had juried,the baby in a rubbish dump near Greymouth. Medical evidence disclosed that it was impossible to ascertain at the time of the finding of the body, 12 to 14 days later, whether the child had lived. For the defence, Mr. VV. 1). Taylor contended that unless it could be proved beyond all reasonable doubt that the child had lived, the jury could not convict.