SUPREME COURT-CRIMINAL SITTINGS.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VII, Issue 90, 15 April 1872, Page 2

SUPREME COURT-CRIMINAL SITTINGS.

0 [Before his Honor Mb. Justice Richkond.] This Day. The session of the Circuit Court commenced this morning wheo the following gentleman were sworn in on the Grand Jury :— Messrs. Barnicoat, Gully, J. Mackay, Wither, Watts, Austin, Talbot, Pifee, W. Oldham, C. Saxton, Buckeridge, Baly, Welle, Stantbn, Canning, Lowe, H. Martin, H. Stafford, Turner, Woolley, and 'N. Edwards, foreman. ;

His Honor delivered the following charge : — Mr. Foreman, and Gentlemen of the Grand Jury, — The last session of this Circuit Court proved, as you will remember, a mniden assize ; and we have been nearly repeating the same pleasing ( xperience (for such I deem it) on the present occasion. There is but one case for trial, aud that of the commonest, description. The evidence against the prisoner consists iv his bpiua: found, as it is alleged, in recent possession of the stolen property. This requires no comment from me to gentlemen of your experience. Nor does the state of the district call for any remark. Ou these occasions a Judge has a perfect right to make such general remarks as may appear to be called for, and in bo doing to take for granted the irulh of notorious public occurrences without legal proof. Such remarks are ou I side the ordinary judicial duties, being made in virtue of the quasi Executive functions which still remain with the Judges in all matters pertaining to the conservation of the peace. Thus a Judge in a disturbed district is warranted in taking notice of its riotous state. This of course is a very different thing from assuming the guilt of any particular persons. Ignorant critics of the Bench have sometimes supposed that in making such observations, as it has sometimes fallen to myself to do, a Judge is trespassing beyond bis functious. This is a mistnke. Yet such remarks, as (hey often affect large numbers of persons, have a political character. The abolition of the Grand Jury would deprive the judicial Bench of ail opportunity of entering upon this wide field. For my own part I should by no means regret such a change, as I quite believe that under civil institutions like ours, it is on the whole better that the Judges should confine themselves to their purely judicial duties, without entering on subjects connected with administration. To-day, at all events, there is no call for any remark whatever upon the general state of this district. It iaaintains its usual orderly state, as the calendar indeed proves- I learn that there is the possibility of a second bill of indictment being pre erred, but for the present the only work before you will be the case to which I have referred. A true bill having been found on the only case set down for trial, the Grand Jury were discharged. Larceny. John Tqole was indicted for stealing a pocketbook containing £6, the property of William Wildman, of Motueka. Mr. Fell appeared for the prisoner who pleaded Not Guilty. Mr. H. Adams, the Crown Prosecutor, having opened the case for tho crown called William Wildman, who stated : On the sth of January I had a £5 note and a £i note in the pocket of my coat, which I laid on a chair in my bedroom. I knew the number of the £5 note. There was no one left in the house. One of my sons was working in the orchard, and the other was away from home. About 11 o'clock, I went out into the orchard, and was absent about twenty minutes. I saw no one enter the house, but people might have gone in from the road without ray seeing them, as I could not see the door. On my return to the house I put my coat on, and at once missed the pocket book. I have not since seen the £5 note. I recognise the one produced as that which I lost. I took the number, as I don't often get hold of a £5 note. Cross-examined : My house is about 20 minutes' walk from Wise's. After laying my coat on the chair I was employed about the bouse in domestic duties. I had had the money about a couple of months. I saw the prisoner for the first time on the morning after I lost the notes. I have never seen the pocket book since. I bad it in my possession for 39 years, and think I should know it again. Louisa M'Conkey : I remember prisoner coming to the Post Boy Hotel in January last. He had a glass of brandy, in payment for which be gave me a £5 note and I gave him the change. Constable Levy came in the evening and asked me for the note which I gave him. He told me the number and the name of the Bank. Cross-examined : I had two other £5 notes in the cash box. Levy askod me if I had a note of a certain number, and : I looked and found it there. Re-examined : I have no particular reason to believe that the note produced was the one I got from the prieouer. Peter Levy : On the 6th January I received information of a Bauk of New South Wales £5 vote of a certain number having been stolen from Mr. Wildman. I made enquires at all the public bouses, and found it at the Post Boy Hotel, between 9 and '10 at night. The Lady Barkly came in from Motueka between five anJ six. The prisoner's statement before the Resident Magistrate was then read) in

which he stated that as he was passing through Motueka a man came out of a shop and asked him to change a £5 note, which he did, and put it in his pocket without noticing the number. This concluded the case for the Crown, and the counsel for the prosecution and for the defence having addressed the jury, His Honor summond up, and after an absence of nearly an hour, the jury returned with a verdict of Guilty. Prisoner was sentenced to six months' imprisonment, with hard labor. This concluded thp criminal business, and to-morrow the only civil case will be tried before a common jury.

The Rev. Mr. Bailey, of Christchurch, has been making from his pulpit sweeping attacks on ihe theatrical profession. Mr. Hopkins has answered him through the local papers. In Adelaide a project has recently been started for the formation of a private company to construct a line of railway from Port Augusta to Port D«rwin. The distance is about 1600 miles, and the lowest estimate of the cost, £4,800,000. By the San Francisco mail intplligpnce has been received of the death of Bishop PompaliVr, who for some years had charge of the Roman Catholic diocese of Auckland. Tdo deceased prelnte died at Brest on (he 29th Dumber, 1871. There are 825 Justices of the Peaoe gazetted for the colony of New Zealand, or, as near ns may hp, one Justice of the Peace for every 275 men, women, and children in the colony. Fnr the colony of Victoria the number of Justices under 600. Mr. Saunders, the ex-Superintendent, of Nelson, when taking the chair recently >n Christchurch, on the occasion of an address delivered by the H. W. Fox, under the auspices of the Total Abstinence Society, s»id that when quite a young man, he had received a medal subscribed for by 37 reclaimed drunkards, and an address thanking him for his efforts in estab--I'shing a society in the town where he lived, which had been the means of reclaiming bo many. At the Supreme Court, Auckland, on Thursday Haley called Mrs. "Russell as a witness for the defence. Her evidence strongly confirmed that of ihe other witnesses for the prosecution. Haley also called witnesses to show that they had known him for many months, aud never knew him to express animus against Russell. Two servants said that they lived in Haley's house at the time of the alleged occurrence, but noticed nothing extraordinary, nor anything to indicate that Haley had been out. The jury found Haley guilty upon three counts in the indictment charging him with intent to kill Thomas Henry Russell. The prisoner then pleaded guilty to sending the threatening letter to destroy property ; to setting fire to Russell's haystacks ; aud to setting fire to the kerosine store. No sentence was imposed for the threatening letter. The sentence for the other charges was penal servitude for life. The $t : now Blockade. — The snow blockade, resulting from storms of exceptional severity, which impsded travel on the Union Pacific portion of the transcontinental route, hns come to an end, and New York and San Francisco are now no more days apart thau they were before. Our mails are coming through in regular time, and our business men or tourists are making their overland trips with the full knowledge that they will arrive at their destinations according to the railroad timetables. It will be interesting to our readers to learn the extent of the bdow blockade which for a time impeded the connection between our farthest West and the utmost East of the American continent. One hundred and seventy miles out of the 3,200 (the distance between San Francisco and New York) was the total amount over which King Frost for a time held sway, and although that space of the line was blocked, it was only at intervals. Probably not over twenty or thirty miles of the one hundred and seventy was for the time impassable ; the rest was easily cleared by the snow ploughs. No detention need be feared in the future, as the company, . for its own interests, has taken care to erect snow fences in all exposed places, and has a powerful rival looming in tho not-very-distant future, in theshapeof the Southern Pacific Railroad, which will pass through less inhospitable regious. It is to be remarked that our end of the line, the Central Pacific (California, Nevada, and Utah) has been kept clear throughout the winter. Indeed it is universally remarked by travellers that the Central Pacific Rail- J road is the most solidly built, beßt equipped and provided line of any on the continent, — News oj the World. The Sydney Murders. — • Since the days of Burke and Hare there has probably not been told a more horrible tale of murder than that related by the Sydney press. Two men, Nicholls and Lester, ,one of them a mere lad, appear to have "deliberately entered into partnership as robbers and assassins. Scarcely belonging

to the recrginaed criminal class, because (heir anteoe.lenis prove them to be fairly educated and rpspectnhly connected, the criminal instinct was yet strong enough in. them to silence all scruples of conscience. Tbe plan they adopted to entrap their victims was the insertion of an advertisement in the newspapers for a clerk or storernan. When the applicants r.ppeared, they represented that their place of husiness was up country ; they enquired whether an advance of salaiy was required, and if the reply was in the negative, they evinced a friendly interest in the possession of their future employe, and generally managed to worm out of him what available means he was possessed of. A few pounds only, as in poor Walker's ease, was sufficient to tempt their cupidity. They engaged the man, met him at the wharf, and dnparted apparently for their destination up the Parramatta River. On the way they knocked him on the head tvith a life-preserver, rifled his pockets, and then threw the inanimate but not dead body, bound hand and foot, overboard. Thus they assassinated and robbed the steward of the Rosario, and poor Walker, formerly a losai preacher on the ijoldfielils of tlits colony. Theevidence on Walker's body fully brought home the crime to Nicliolls and Lester, and when they left the courthouse a large body of police was necessary to prevent the excited populace taking summary . vengeance upon them. It is impossible at present to determine the extent to which these wretches have carried out their system of wholesale assassination, but the Sydney police have exhibited so far a praiseworthy smartness in tracking the fellows, and there is little doubt that fresh horrors will be revealed before Nicholls and Lester are brought to trial for the two murders they at present stand charged with committing.