TRIAL OF RUA

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2839, 2 August 1916, Page 6

TRIAL OF RUA

RIVAL OF THE TICHBORNE CASE. FOR. LENGTH. By Telegraph—Press Association. Auckland, August 1. At the Rua trial to-day the Crown Prosecutor concluded His address to the jury, and Judge Chapman commenced his summing up. His Honour reduced the counts preferred against Rua to four, as follow:— Sedition, resisting at Wai-iti, counselling to murder, and counselling to do actual bodily harm. His Honour remarked that the ease was without precedent in Australasia, and possibly it was only oxceeded in length in tho annals of tho administration of tho law in tho British Empire by one case, the Tichborne case. It would take its place above all others in the respect that since the beginning of the case tho jury had sat from <lay to day continually. Eighty-seven witnesses had been examined, and thero had been nineteen incidents of recalling evidence. Despite that, the case, comparatively speaking, involved siniplo issues, but the ovidonce had been copious almost to a bewildering degree. Tho arrest at Maungapo'hatu, he had come to the conclusion, could not be justified. It was mudo on three warrants relating to offences against the statutory sale of intoxicating liquors These offences, however, were not crimes, and therefore under .the Justices of the Peaco Act warrants could not be executed on a Sunday. The most important part about the Maungapohatu affray was whether or not there was a scheme of resistance, and, if so, what was the scheme? If there was no design it might be difficult to sheet the matter homo to accused. Ho did not know of any case whore thero had been such a conflict of evidence. Dealing with the expression, "Patua, patua," alleged to have been used by Rua as a signal, His Honour said that if thero were no previous design thero conld have been no signal, and if there was a signal it was a signal to set going tho affray. The Court adjourned.