SUPREME COURT.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXV, Issue 35, 12 February 1915, Page 6

SUPREME COURT.

WELLINGTON SESSIONS,

THE GAUDIN CASE.

Per Press -Association

Wellington, February 12

At the Supreme Court, before Chief Justice Stout and Mr J ustice Edwards, application was made for a writ of Habeas'Corpus for the release of F. E. Gaudin now undergoing five years' military detention at Auckland on the grounds that he is illegally detained. Gaudin was tried at Samoa before a military tribunal on charges of Avar treason. lu a affidavit, he stated he was not given an opportunity of consulting counsel before the trial. Sir John Findlay (for Gaudin) described the sentence passed on Gaudin as a savage one, calculated to shock every right-thinking man and woman in New Zealand. The Court said Counsel should not make such a reflection on another Court.

Sir John Findlay: "What I want to submit is that the imposing of imprisonment in itself excludes the jurisdiction of martial law," and added there was no legal authority for Gaudin's arrest, and that the statutes and regulations did not confer on the Governor the right to invest the military and police with unlimited powers, which ought not to be so exercised as to constitute tyranny. The case is proceeding.