SUPREME COURT, CHRISTCHURCH.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3594, 18 January 1883, Page 3

SUPREME COURT, CHRISTCHURCH.

Cheistchuech, Yesterday. The criminal sittings of the Supreme Court were opened yesterday by Judge Johnston, whose charge to the Grand Jury was confined for the most part to a brief review of the cases set down for trial. It was prefaced by a few words of allusion to the recent changes which have taken place with regard to the administration of criminal justice. The law with regard to the execution of the duties of Justifies of the Peace, his Honor remarked, had been consolidated during the last session of Parliament, and amendments introduced which he had reason to believe would be of considerable utility. These chiefly related to dealing with cases in which children, youths, and adults were charged with indictable criminal offences. These, as the law had previously stood, must be sent up for trial, but the alteration would, in such cases especially as indecent assaults upon children, A:c, save the scandal that had. been inevitable when persons who were anxious to plead guilty before a Magistrate were obliged to be sent up for trial "at tlie Supreme Court. The alteration in the procedure had been borrowed from an Act of the Imperial Parliament of 1879, and he thought that it would be found to act beneficially. It was one of a series of improvements which he trusted might save some difficulties in future. The Grand Jury found true bills in all the cases, and in one case the prosecution was withdrawal, as the evidence given differed very materially from that in the Lower Court. The following convictions were obtained and sentences passed : —Herman Hempton, four years' penal servitude for forgery; Daniel Neal, two years for stealing from a dwelling ; John Hughes, alias Gillcce, three years' penal servitude for forgery ; George Smith, for wife-beating, three months'hard labor; Mary Brown, for larceny as a servant, eighteen months' hard labor.