HABEAS CORPUS ACTION FAILS

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 181, 18 August 1937, Page 3

HABEAS CORPUS ACTION FAILS

— Press Association.)

Magistrate's Actions Upheld

(By relesraph-

f " ' INVERCARGILL, Last Night. • The application for a writ of habeas jeorpus made by Mr. G. J. Reed to quash ,the conviction of Erie Clarence Taylor, jheard by Mr. Justice Kennedy in the' jSupreme Court yesterday, was disallowed and costs amounting to £7 7s. ,were given against the applicant. The] jCrown Prosecutor, Mr. H. J. Macalister, jopposed the application. In the course of his reserved judg-. ment to-day, his Honour said: "The] first ground for the application wasl that the warrant was without jurisdiction and the final gronnd was that the proceedings were wholly irregular. On the argument these grounds were defined in a submission that the tiibunal was disqualified by bias and was with-j out jurisdietion. The reason for this j submission was stated to be that the! learned Magistrate asked a question asj to a conviction in his own Court, which: implied his personal knowledge of a; conviction which he had entered at am earlier date. He also showed, it was; said, bias and prejudgment in asking! the question, which elicited a conviction-' in Dunedin. Bias is a question of fact. The mere recollection of a judicial: officer that he had dealt with an: loffender at an earlier date is not bias., ■To put a question as to a conviction in janother Court, the question being unjexplained but the suggestion being: jmade that the mind of the learned jMagistrate was not a tabula rasa, as it: •was suggested it should be,-because he; jhad some knowledge, probably by 'reading a newspaper, sufficient to prompt the question, is quite inadequate to disclose bias disqualifying him from proceeding npon the inquiry and depriving him of all jurisdietion. The learned Magistrate had no pecuniary interest. He was not judging his own case and the knowledge or recollection. which prompted the questions does not show an interest so substantial or of such a character as to be likely to give rise to any reasonable suspicion of bias. In England it had been held on an application for a writ of certiorari that the fact that a Magistrate present on the Bench had given evidence in another matter against the person charged before the Court did not give rise to the presumption of interest or bias in the result. It appears that the proceedings from Btart to finish were within the jurisdietion of the learned Magistrate and the application must faii.