MAGISTRATES' COURTS.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1499, 5 December 1878, Page 3

MAGISTRATES' COURTS.

CHRISTOHURCH. Thtjbsday, Deobmbbb sth. [Before Or. L. Mellish, Esq., E.M.] Dbunk and Disoedebly.—Margaret Buchanan was fined 10s. LUNACY. —Dominic Mullaby was charged •with lunacy from drink, and remanded to Lyttelton for medical treatment until December 13th. Obsobne ExrosiJßß. —William Hayman, remanded from the 28th November was again brought up on the charge of wilfully and obscenely exposing himself in a public place. The prisoner, prior to being remanded, was convicted of the first two offences committed on July 26th and November 27th respectively, and had been remanded on two others. at the request of his counsel for the purpose of calling additional evidence in defence. There was now a fresh charge of a similar nature, the offence being alleged to have taken place on November 16th. Mr Neck having addressed the Court, called Robert Brinkwell, who swore that the prisoner was with him in his house on the 9th November, between the hours of 6 and 8 p.m., the time ■when the offence took place. "With respect to the third charge, alleged to have been committed on October 21st, Mr Neck called Charles Frederick Brighting, who said that he saw the prisoner nearly all that day in Kaiapoi. The latest hour he saw him was between 4 and 5 p.m. The Kaiapoi train usually left at twenty-five minutes past six. This evidence concluded the defence on the third and fourth charges. On the fifth charge the offence was alleged to have been committed on November 16th. After evidence had been taken, Mr Neck addressed the Court in mitigation of punishment, suggesting a monomaniacal influence as the only reasonable hypothesis of the prisoner's conduct. In passing sentence, his Worship said, taking into consideration the high character the prisoner had received, he must to a certain extent be a lunatic to act aB he had done ; he could not otherwise imagine h»w a man could be such an absolute brute. If it had been a second charge it would have been a heavier sentence than twelve months he would have received, and he might rely on it that if, on the expiry of his sentence, ho were ever brought up again, the punishment would be far heavier. In recording a sentence in each case of twelve months' imprisonment with hard labor, the sentences to run concurrently, he waß simply and solely influenced by the very high character the prisoner had received. He must be aware that a far greater punishment than this would fall upon his family, whom he had disgraced ; he likewise Eossessed the consciousness that ho had ruined imself in business and in the estimation of his friends, and the evidence was so overwhelmingly conclusive against him that his counsel could only throw himself on the mercy of the Court. There was not the shadow of a doubt but that be was the perpetrator of numberless cases which hud not been brought forward, and in passing sentence his Worship said he at least was putting a fctop to these outrages for twelve months, and he hoped for ever. Mr Neck asked his Worship if the expression he hud made use of that " the prisoner's counsel could only throw himself on the mercy of the Court," led to the inference that he had failed in any way in his duty whilo defending the prisoner. His Worflhip replied, " Certainly not." Mr Neck had made the best of a very bad case/but that he had been thoroughly overweighted by the nal ure of the evidence, which no advocacy could upset. The prisoner was then removed.

1 Tbansieks.—The Criterion Hotel, from George Bird to Robert Wallace, and tho Talbot Hotel from Wm. Atkinson to John Franks.