THE CASE OF MRS C. WRIGHT.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume V, Issue 458, 10 December 1880, Page 2

THE CASE OF MRS C. WRIGHT.

To the Editor. g IR> —I was amused to see in your last issue a long letter from Mr G. W. Nalder on this case. His dates are wrong, his facts misleading, and his logic bad ; but this is not unusual. The object of the letter is, I presume, to lead the public to think that in the mode of treating her case an injustice has been done to Mrs C. Wright. A second information for the same offence, but expressed in severer terms, was certainly laid against Mrs C. Wright last Tuesday, but she was never called upon to answer it. She was only called upon to answer the original charge of assaulting W. H. Rossiter by throwing a bowl of boiling water over him, " Contrary to the Statute," etc., etc. ; and she had as much time to prepare her defence as Rossiter had to prepare his complaint (five days according to Mr G. W. Nalder). Dining the hearing of the case such evidence -was .forthcoming as satisfied the Bench that they could not deal with it, but that the case must go

to trial. The Bench could have pursued id other course, and Mr G. W. Nalder knows as well as any one else that, in cases of summary conviction, if at the hearing the Bench find that the assault complained of was of an aggravuted form, or was for other reasons a proper subject for prosecution by indictment, it is to abstain from any adjudication on the case, and to deal with the matter as a charge of an indictable offence. In conclusion, I must say.l am surprised that a newspaper discussion on a case still sub judi.ee should have been initiated, and such reflections cast on the purity of the Bench, by a solicitor of the Supreme Con t of New Zealand.—l am, etc., OUTSIDER. Akaroa, Dec. 4, 1880. [The above lette: should have appeared in our last issue. By some mistake, however, though forwarded in plenty of time, it did not come to hand till too late. We regret the delay as much as our correspondent.—Ed. A.M."]