JURY FINDS MEN NOT GUILTY OF STEALING SAFE AND MONEY

Wanganui Chronicle, 30 April 1949, Page 5

JURY FINDS MEN NOT GUILTY OF STEALING SAFE AND MONEY

AUCKLAND, Last Night (PA).— Two men, jointly charged with breaking and entering the State Theatre in £ymonds Street on August 13 and stealing a safe valued at £4O and £6l in cash, were found not guilty by the jury in the Supreme Court before Mr Justice Callan. Accused were, Francis John Daynes and George Samuel Crowther. They were also charged with converting two motor-cars, valued at £3OO and £250 respectively on the same date. Emanuel Wilson, who was also charged with the two accused for the same offences, pleaded guilty on Thursday and was remanded for sentence. Summing up His Honour said that th e case depended entirely on the evidence of an accomplice, Mrs. Edwina Keitha Griffin. There was no corroboration of her evidence regarding the implication of the accused, although it was to b e regretted that the principle that an accused person was not be be convicted, if there was any reasonable doubt, might mean the escape of the guilty. A conviction against someone who might, after all be innocent was so much worse.

Having regard to what the principal witness had to admit about her past life, and the impression she gave in the witness box, her oath was not likely to be taken as reliable. She did not inspire the strong confidence necessary to convict anybody. She had been quite deeply involved in the burglary and was also an accomplice in th e conversion of motor cars. Even if her evidence was accepted it would be unsafe to convict on evidence of an accomplice The natural instinct of persons of a low and weak character when interviewed by authority was to try and save their own shin, continued His Honour. It did not need much wisdom or intelligence for Mrs. Griffin to realise when questioned by the police about the crime that she herself was likely to be in a bad spot of bother. She would jump to the conclusion that the police would be suspicious of the others and that they would be glad of a story that would enable them to get to the bottom of the crime.

From the nature of the offence three men were not rcquired.The safe required two men to lift, but conversion of the cars needed only one. If. a stratum of society where affections between sexes spiung up quickly and died quickly, enmities were likely to be aroused which might lead someone low enough to be an accomplice in crime to introduce someone who had not been involved in it. He agreed that an acquittal in a serious crime ot this nature, a type which was unfortunately fairly prevalent in the country today, would be a bad thing, but in their eagerness to stamp oui crime the jury should not be misled into the possibility oi convicting an innocent person. The jury returned a verdict accordingly-