SUPREME COURT.

Evening Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2398, 8 December 1870, Page 2

SUPREME COURT.

CRIMINAL SESSIONS. Tins Dav. (Before Mr Justice Chapman.) SHEEP STEALING. Thomas Hewsou, Richard Fellows, James Neill, and James Anderson, were charged with this offence. Mr Barton defended. The facts of the case, as stated by the Crown Prosecutor, are shortly as follows : The prosecutors are Messrs Graham and Hawdon, of the Hawkburn Station. The prisoners were working as miners at the Bannockburn, near the station. Three of the men for a considerable time have worked together in the same claim, and lived in the same tent. The prisoner Fellows lived in a tent by himself close to the tent of the other prisoners. The manager of the station had missed sheep from the station at various times, and he instructed a shepherd named Mackenzie to discover who were stealing them. Mackenzie watched, and on the 30th August observed Fellows and Hewson feeding a number of the station sheep in a gully. He continued to watch them until he got quite close to them, when he saw them seize the sheep, bound them by their legs, and laid them upon the ground. He then called upon Fellows by name, whereupon both men ran away. Mackenzie gave information of what he had seen, and on the 4th of September he, the manager of the station, and Sergeant Casscls, went to the prisoner’s claim and made a search, which resulted in their finding four sheep skins with the heads upon the skins, the intestines of the sheep being tied up in the skins, and concealed nnder a heap of stones and clay in the claim. After arresting the prisoners they found in the tent a leg of mutton concealed in a nag. On the Bth May they again searched the tent, and found the skins of four sheep, all of which were distinctly sworn to as belonging to the station. Neill and Fellows were found guilty, and remanded for sentence ; Anderson and Hewson not guilty. Hewsou will be tried for larceny to-morrow.