Circumstantial Evidence.

Cromwell Argus, Volume III, Issue 136, 18 June 1872, Page 7

Circumstantial Evidence.

A somewhat curious case was heard in the Resident Magistrate's Court, on Wednesday last, in which, although much circumstantial evidence was brought against the accused, v et there were certain points wanted to bring about a conviction. Circumstantial evidence, though in certain cases the only available proof, is, as has been proved time after time Leven after the sacrifice of innocent lives through its admission —totally at fault and untrustworthy. The case in point was comparatively of trivial moment, and we but refer to it to show that had the accused been convicted on the evidence offered, possibly a wrong might have been done. This evidence, however, was very strong. The charge a crainst the accused was that of larceny, said to have been perpetrated at about four o'clock last Monday morning, at the Orari Hotel. The accused slept in a room on one side of the house, and the prosecutor and two other men in a room on the opposite side, a passage and one or two rooms intervening between the apartments. The evidence showed that one of the three men was awoke by the rattle of the washstand, as if some one had ran against it; and the landlord most positively declared that just about the time the larceny was said to have been committed he heard the door of the room accused slept in open, and the sound of footsteps proceeding through the house in the direction of prosecutor's room and back a<rain. This, certainly, was very strong evidence against the accused man, Clark. But it was shown in evidence that a motive was wanting, for Clark had money of his own when he entered .the house on the Monday ; but the weight of the negative proof is but slight compared to another, which evidently led to the dismissal of the case. Clark was a stranger to the house, and had, as far as the evidence showed, never been near to the room the prosecutor slept in, and so could nothavo known which bed he occupied, or where he placed his waistcoat on retiring to rest. Pitch dark at the time of the supposed robbery, it is somewhat against reason to suppose that a man, a stranger to the house, could have at once " spotted" the place where the money was; and a man would hardly be so foolhardy to lay himself open to immediate detection as by entering a room with three men in it to fossick about till he found the object of his search. Though the sound of footsteps, etc., all pointed to the accused being the thief, yet there existed in his favour the above very reasonable supposition of his not being so, a supposition just sufficient to create a doubt, which the Court, justlv enough, allowed to weigh in his favour.— Timaru Herald.