SUPREME COURT.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVI, Issue 26, 5 June 1913, Page 6

SUPREME COURT.

TIMARU SESSIONS. [Per Press Association.] I > Timaru, June 4. The Supreme Court criminal session opened to-day before Mr Justice Denniston, who congratulated the Grand Jury on the lightness and comparative unimportance of the calendar. To-day two oases were disposed of, both acused being acquitted. One man was charged with breaking into and stealing from the railway parcels office at Timaru. The evidence, according to the judge, amounted merely to strong suspicion. In the other case a man was accused of wilfully making a false declaration to the Royal Insurance Company of the value of goods destroyed by fire at Mount'Somers, His explanation was that the statement was made up by his wife, who had bought the articles, and she signed it without looking at it. Her listtotalled up to £46(1, and his policy w r as for £l7o. The local agent of the Company valued the goods at £220 before the fire, and he.saw no reason to reduce it now. To-morrow will be taken up with the case of C. H. Besley, for manslaughter, by culpably negligent driving of a motor car, with the result that a postal officer on a bicycle was run into and killed. Commenting on this case; to the Grand Jury, His Honor said that there were several degrees of manslaughter. This was a painful case, in which it was impossible not to sympathise with the accused, who was a respectable man, against whom there was no suggestion of malice, and who probably had already felt more keenly the consequence of the accident than any punishment that might be inflicted. The Grand Jury, however, should not be influenced by that consideration. The grounds of the charge were that the accused was on the w'roiig side of the road, that his car was insufficiently lighted, and that ho did not sound his horn. The Grand Jury found a true bill. INTERCARG ILL SESSIONS. Invercargill, June 4, The re-trirtf of Frank James McFarlane, charged with assault with intent to commit rape, in which case the previous jury disagreed, was proceeded with to-day. The jury, after a retirement of two and a-half hours, returned a verdict of guilty, and prisoner was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment with hard labor.