BENEFIT OF DOUBT

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 137, 6 December 1929, Page 13

BENEFIT OF DOUBT

CHARGES DISMISSED

"Looking at the whole of the facts, I think that the defendant's explanation is not inconsistent with the facts as the police found them. His chief difficulty with me is that he did not make a frank explanation when the police arrived. I think ,that there is just an element of doubt that the liquor which the men saw was exposed for sale and it may be that the licensee's explanation is the correct one. That being so, I will have to give him the benefit of the doubt and dismiss the charges." With these remarks Mr. E. Page, S.M., to-day dismissed charges ef keeping open for sale after hours and [exposing liquor for sale after hours I against Frederick Mockett, the licensee of the Terminus Hotel.

The evidence showed that when the police visited the hotel about 9.15 p.m., on Saturday, 19th October, they found three men in the private bar with the licensee behind the bar. The defendant s explanation was that he had been stocktaking in the bar and that the outsjde doors of the hotel had been locked. The mon had obtained admission by means of a latchkey, which one of them held for the purpose of delivering milk early in the morning. The licensee said that he had just looked up from the sheets he was making out when the police entered. No liquor had been served.

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