Supreme Court.

Manawatu Herald, 8 March 1894, Page 2

Supreme Court.

The criminal sittings of the Supreme Court were continued on Tuesday, before His Honor, Mr Justice Richmond. SHEEP STEALING. A tottering old man named John bteer was charged with stealing a sheep from the run of Mr John Davies, of Totara, near Foxton, or as an alternative receiving a sheep knowing it to be stolen. Mi- Hnclair, of Blenheim, appeared for the accused, who pleaded not guilty. Mr W. J. Newton was foreman of the jury. The case for the prosecution, as stated by the Crown Prosecutor, was to the effect that on the 28th January, as a couple of rabbiters were passing by accused's whare, their dog pulled the paunch of a sheep out of some manuka scrub. On a search being made a sheep's head, apparently only recently severed from the carcase, and bearing Mr Davis* earmark, was also discovered. Accused's whare was afterwards searohed, and portions of a recently killed sheep, a sheep skin, some mutton fat rendered down in a camp oven, and some bags of wool were found. The prisoner stated that the meat found in hiu whare was cut from a dead sheep for use in his eel baakafc. The tallow had been in hi* pagans sioa for several yearn, and he had just melted it down again. The wool was dead wool gathered on the run, the sheepskin he cut from a 1 drowned sheep, and the bloodiuarks

on the flooring came from rabbits. He further stated that at the date of the alleged offence he was laid up with an attack of rheumatism. His Honor, in addressing the jury. said that juries very often considered whether a prisoner in their opinion ought to be punished. That wag not their duty in the matter. Their duty was to say whether the prisoner was guilty or not of the offence with which he was charged. The queßtion as to whether he should be punished was nothing to do with them. The qnestion whether a tottering old man like the prisoner should be punished was, with all due respect to the jury, a matter which did not concern them. That was a matter for those concerned with the administration of justice. He did not think that in a community like ours everybody should confine themselves to that part of their public duty which thelaw expected. Only that morning he had to express his entire dissent from an act of the Grand Jury, because, in his|opinion, they had- assumed funotions which did not belong to ;them—- functions which ought to belong to the common jury. It did not belong to the Grand Jury to try a case, but to say merely whether there was a case for trial. They should keep to their duty, and leave something to be done by other authorities. Whether or not it was a pitiful thing to send an old man like the prisoner to gaol was not part of their duty to consider, but simply and solely to consider from the evidence whether he stole the sheep. Juries very often took upon themselves in that Court to bring in a verdict of M not guilty " against the clearest evidence of guilt. Sometimes theße verdicts had relieved him of the obvious difficulty of dealing with a particular prisoner, but at the same time he had felt that there bad been a gross miscarriage of justice. There was a legal maxim that the Judge is condemned when an offender is acquitted, and he had often gone out of the Court feeling like a guilty person, because, in spite of all he could do and say, a verdict had been returned contrary to the clearest evidence, and a guilty person had escaped. This had often been his experience here. The present case was quite an unparalleled one. This was the first time he had seen a man of the prisoner's age enter the dock, and he hoped it would be the last - probably it would. As regarded the prisoner's intellect, they could see that he was quite alive. He was decidedly intelligent and exceedingly fertile in resource, and so far there was nothing so pitiable about his case. At the same time it was very difficult to say how such cases should be treated. The jury in the case after a little over an hour's adjournment returned a verdict of not guily, and His Honor in discharging the accused said, " Steer, you can go. You are declared to be an innocent man." -N.Z. TL.et.