SUPREME COURT, DUNEDIN.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3602, 27 January 1883, Page 3

SUPREME COURT, DUNEDIN.

Dunedin, Yesterday. Judge Williams, in charging the jury in the case of Beattic, indicted for murder, said:—This case, like most cases of the land, depended on circumstantial evidence, and it may be well that I should preface my remarks by exj)laining shortly what circumstantial evidence really is, and what amount of circumstantial evidence will justify a jury in arriving at the conclusion that the prisoner is guilty of the crime he stands accused of. Now, circumstantial evidence consists of a- series of circumstances pointing in one direction, namely, to the guilt of the accused person. Not only must they be consistent with his edict, but also inconsistent with any other rational conclusion. That is a consideration most important to jurors in cases of circumstantial evidence to bear in mind. I will not compare circumstantial jevidencc to a chain, and say that, where one of the circumstances attempted to be proved fails to be proved, that therefore is the missing link, and that the whole fabric must fall to pieces. There may be a number of circumstances admitted in evidence without proof of one of them, but it does not necessarily follow from that cause that they fail to be proved, if the remaining circumstances proved points to the prisoner's g-uilt. The jury had to be satisfied —first, that Mrs Beattic was murdered, and second, that the prisoner was the murderer. As to the suggestion of prisoner's counsel that the appearances of the body when found were consistent with the theory of death by suicide or by accident, her jn-c----vious mental condition was not inconsistent with that view. His own view was that the appearances were not consistent with suicide being the direct cause of death; there was no evidence that deceased attempted to hang herself, and that was the merest possible guesswork. What appeared the most weak part of the Crown case was that it might be consistent with the evidence that the woman was dead before the prisoner went to his hut on June 10. The conclusion one would draw from the reading of Dr. De Lautour's evidence would be that, from his point of view, the woman attempted suicide herself, and was murdered afterwards. If the wounds on her neck were self-inflicitcd, and those on her head by somebody else, it could not be reasonably expected that blood would be found on the clothes worn by the person who inflicted them. John Bcwby, charged with indecent assault on a girl eight years old, was dismissed.