PROSECUTION OR PERSECUTION ?

NZ Truth, Issue 75, 24 November 1906, Page 6

PROSECUTION OR PERSECUTION ?

The Case of Valentine Atkinson.

That Extraordinary Magisterial Utterance.

Auckland 'Tec. Millar's Mulish

Meanderings.

Says : "It is Our Duty to Get Convictions."

At the Auckland Supreme Court on Monday there figured on the charge sheet the case of Valentine Atkinson. The ofience alleged against him was the terrible one of committing an indecent assault on a little girl named Mary Cotterill, ten years ■of age. The evidence Riven before S.M. Dyer m the lower court was fully reported m these columns. His Honor, Judge Edwards, m charging the Grand Jury, drew their special attention to the case of Atkinson. They must bp very careful, he said, to be quite certain m their minds that; there was sufficient "weight of evidence to. warrant th,eir bringing. |n: a true bill against acciised, which^would necessitate, his standing his trial before the conjmon jury. That some offence had been committed on the child seemed to him, the Judge, probable, tor a child's screams were said to have been heard by ?, neighbor. But what they, the Grand Jury, had to consider was whether the evidence which, would- be brought before theta warranted a true bill against this man. Atkinson was a yo-ung man of hitherto

UNBLEMISHED CHARACTER ; he was engaged m a responsible po-. sition on one of the daily 'papers m, Auckland ; he was married 1 to a J young woman and had an infant child. Furthermore, the offence with which he was charged was alleged to" have been committed within a,' short., distance of his own home. To him J fhis. Honor) it seemed an extraordinary thins .that Atkinson could be accused of committing: such a .crime.. He asked the Grand Jury to consider very ■ , caref silly whether - the,/ evidence admitted of their bringing m a; true bill against this young man. Subseciuentl'- as was generally expected, the Grand Jury. threw out the bill and Atkinson 1 was released., „'. When "Truth" reported the proceedings m connection • with this case m the lower court, comment was. made on a statement of the presiding magistrate, Mr Dyer. Mr Bundbn, who appeared m defence of the^prisouer on that occasion, called certain witnesses with a view to prbving a complete alibi. Now, it is .usually recognised m a court of justice that if a satis facto rv alibi can be established, the accused person must be acquitted. Apparently. however, this is not so, with S.M. Dyer, for he interrupted' Lawyer Lundon with the astounding statement that whatever evidence might be tendered to ; prove an alibi, he (Dyer) intended, to;, commit Atkinson for trial ! That intention he duly carried out. Whether this course should have been pursued,

or whether Mr Dyer should have de-

\ cided, on the evidence brought before 1 him by Mr Lun-don, that there was 1 not sufficient "testimony to. oonvict

' Atkinson at all, o ur readers can judge i m the light of the remarks of his ' Honor above quoted. The fact remains, however, that by S.M., Dyer's action Valentine Atkinson, whom most people who have studied the case consider as innocent of the charge as Magistrate Dyer himself, has had to suffer protracted agony of mind for many; weeks before he could clear his name of

THE HORRIBLE CHARGE brought against him. But the question of S.M. Dyer's iction m committing the accused for

trial is not the most serious m this lamentable case. The action of the police engaged m the matter savors more of Russian autocracy than of boasted New Zealand democratic rule. It will be remembered that the allefred offence on the little girl, Mary Cotterill, was committed some-*' .where about 6.40 p.m. At that time it was dark. Mary, who is but 10 years of age, and her; sister, Sarah, who is only 8 years old, walked a little way home with a young friend. fThe two sisters were returning when, so it is alleged, a man accosted Mary, and committed a nameless (•'but «tot the capital) offence upon her. She streamed,, so she says. A Mrs, Dyer, .whose house stands within a dozen yards of the place where the alleged assault took place, swears she, 'heard nothing, although she . was sitting /quietly m the house at the time. On lute other hand, a Mrs Lupton, who resides 300 or 400 yards down the street, asserts that she heard a child's cries, but saw nothing. Either the child has made a mistake m the location of the alleged assault, or .there is something startingly inconsistent m the evidence of these two presumably disinterested women witnesses. , However, this may be, the children made their way home and, their mother observing that something was the matter, little Mary

complained that she had been, molested by a man. Asked what man;,^.she, seemingly, was ;nonplussed-. t Then ; a strange thins happened. The child^s sister, little Sarah Cotterill, said she knew the man. It was the same one, she said, who had given her a half-penny some time before for fetching a loaf of bread for him. [Further questioned the child said she knew the gate of the house he came out of. On this slender testimony the mother took her children and started out TO FIND THE RUFFIAN.

iwho had molested Mary. The 8 year old guide led them to the' house she said the man had come from and Mrs Cotterill knocked at the door. {Valentine Atkinson's house it was, and he himself answered the summons. Mrs Cotterill explained that one of her children had been molested and said she had reason to believe the brute who had done it lived there. Atkinson, of course, denied that such was the case, and the wo- - man, apparently, satisfied, went away. The strangest part is that, although it was but a short time, less than' an hour, after the alleged assault, we hf-ar nothing of either child, v.ho came to Atkinson's house with 'their mother, pointing on aecusin-' finger at ll»>s man when lv* opened the (loot to ilieiu, and baying

"That is 'the man!" 'Apparently neither recognised him. 'And yet we find that on the following Sunday (two days after) both these mites identified Atkinson at the Police Station as the culprit. When it is shown just how the identification business was engineered- readers will no longer be surprised at the children's action. On Sunday afternoon Detective Millar called at Atkinson's house, at Kingsland. He said a complaint had been made of a child having been assaulted, and that the man who molested her was alleged to have entered Atkinson's house. He (Millar) therefore had to ask Atkinson to come with him to the Police Station. At the Police Station the ■ farcical identification business was gone through. Atkinson stood m line with six other men. His attire included a frock coat and tall hat. Three of his temporary confreres were Saturday night "drunks,"- another was under arrest for committing an indecent act ; the other two were dressed m ordinary working men's attire, one with no collar on. It can easily be judged which was the most conspicuous of these seven men, and Which the most likely, therefore, for two little girls, aged 10 and 8 years respectively, to point out as the man wanted. Besides, they probably had never seen the other men m their lives before, but Atkinson they had encountered when they went to his house with their mother on the previous Friday -night ! If Inspector Culleri thinks such farc|cal identification methods as these of any value outside a Gilbert-Sullivan comic opera it is a bad. lookout for the Auckland police administration.

Having ' got . Atkinson duly "sworn to;" the : next act was m the police ; court. The evidence of the two children, of course- the, principal witnesseS, 1 was,; remarkable .m many ways. Thefge bifoes 'of tender years gave tHeir^ evidence with a. glibness that TOas" simply; starting. They talked m phraseology that Would only have beenexpected of' persons thrice their age. One' of these sentences spoken by the hjite' of J5 years, was . «'We loitered on ■the. way; ''^describing what occurred when. theJmah accosted them, "I then, imade another narrow escape." , The actual ■ assault itself was described m ■such rt manner as to gladden the heart of : ariv educational enthusiast by its - EXTREME"- MINUTENESS AND • „-.■•.. DETAIL.

Little Mary Cbtterill, m one sentence which it , is impossible to print, used the word ■ . • 'inserted , ' ' where it might have .been hazarded that m ninety,nine-. cases ; but of every hundred, a child of her>, age;, (provided always she had not .be^n- previously coached for her part) would. have used some more single : word , such as ; ' ' 'put' 'or' 'placed." We have already mentioned that the child Sarah had spoken of knowing the man w&o assaulted her sister to be the same one who gave her a halfpenny tb fetch a loaf of bread for him. ..She was examined on this point, and electrified the Court by saying that the incident referred to occurred during the last Christmas holidays! The distance of time between thajt; and the "police court pro-: ceedintfs was exactly nine months and two weeks, and this was a child of eight recounting the affair ! Such was the evidence upon which the police asked that Valentine Atkinson should be committed to stand his trial at the Supreme Court. What he has suffered, and what his young wife has suffered m the interim no one can know but themaelves. But. what the public does know is that, if every man m Auckland is liable to have his good name besmirched by arrest on such flimsy, idiotic suspicion as that against Atkinson, nobody is safe to remain m a community where such bungling is possible.

As to the conduct of Detective Millar, who had the case m his hands, he certainly seems to have done his best to-, bring the charge home. The mother of the child alleged to have been assaulted has repeatedly asked to be allowed to withdraw the charge. The police as repeatedly refused. Atkinson alleges that Detective Millar has been guilty of

A GROSS ACT OF CONTUMELY by. deliberately pointing him out to a companion m the street and passing some uncouth remark which apparently had to do with the case under notice. The same Millar is reported to have retorted to a well-known citizen of Auckland, and a bank-manager, to boot, who cast doubt as to the sufficiency of evidence to connect Atkinson with the case : "It is pur diitv to get convictions." Perhaps it is the duty of the police to get convictions, but if this man Millar, who,' once he gets a grip, seems to hang on to a suspect with the tenacity of a thoroughbred bulldog, repeats the Atkinson performance many times he will have, a big fall, sure enough. Had Judge Edwards known all the circumstances of the Atkinson hounding business Millar would very probably have' had- a sultry time last •Monday at .the Suptem^>Coiifi/''