SUPREME COURT Found Not Guilty Of Burglary

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31086, 15 June 1966, Page 7

SUPREME COURT Found Not Guilty Of Burglary

It did not require a Sherlock Holmes to deduce that a man who ran from a bungalow when the householder returned home had been burgling it, said the Crown Prosecutor (Mr C. M. Roper) in the Supreme Court yesterday. This deduction, however, was not accepted by a jury, which found Hans Mensink, aged 34, a salesman (Mr P. G. S. Penlington), not guilty on a charge of entering the dwelling house of Colin Henry Gant at 270 Halswell Junction road on January 18, with intent to commit crime.

Mr Penlington, in Mensink’s defence, told the jury that it was a case of the Crown “jumping to conclusions.” Mere suspicion against Mensink, and opportunity for him to commit a crime, were not adequate proof. Mr Justice Wilson, on the jury’s verdict—given after two hours’ deliberation—ordered that Mensink be discharged. Mr Roper, in opening the case, suggested that Mensink had been virtually "caught in the act.”

Mensink, the Crown alleged, had entered Gant’s house early in the afternoon, while the latter’s wife was out visiting her mother, who lives in Middle Lincoln road, nearby. On returning home, Mrs Gant saw a car parked outside her house and on unlocking the house door heard a bang, as of a Venetian blind hitting a window frame, and then saw a man—the accused —running away from the house to the car. When Mrs Gant ran after Mensink and called to him, said Mr Roper, he came back, in a highly nervous manner, said he had been looking for people who grew and sold orchids, and asked for directions to any such establishment.

Mensink then drove off, but not before Mrs Gant had noticed a bedroom window wide open and had taken his car number. Mrs Gant found her house disturbed, and a gold halfsovereign missing. “It doesn't take a Sherlock Holmes to deduce that the accused had been rummaging in the house, took fright on Mrs Gant’s return, and made his escape out of the bedroom window," said Mr Roper.

Evidence on these lines was given by Jill Gant and her husband, Colin Henry Gant, Jean Kolkman (Mrs Gant’s mother) and DetectiveConstable T. J. Gorman. No evidence was called for the defence—but addressing the jury, Mr Penlington said that if Mensink had been the man who had entered the bouse, one would have expected some independent, silent evidence of it But there was none. The fact that Mensink was seen near the house, with the window open, did not prove he had been inside. And as to his running off there was evidence that he cleared the deep, wide roadside ditch in so doing. “And wouldn’t any man take such a ditch on the run in order to clear it—unless he were a giant?" said Mr Penlington.