ACQUITTED!

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 738, 10 August 1929, Page 22

ACQUITTED!

Boy Charged with Manslaughter JURY STOPS CASE

HERE are not many of you who would not have done the same had you seen your mother knocked down twice.”

Mr. Justice Swift made this remark at the Old Bailey recently at the conclusion of evidence by Thomas Frederick Carter, IG, a printer, who was charged with the manslaughter of Arthur" Sanderson, the grand jury having reduced the charge from murder. At a previous hearing Carter said he attacked Sanderson with a knife because he was “knocking his mother and sister about,” and that he was “glad he did it.” The jury stopped the case against Carter, and found him not guilty. Carter was discharged. This decision was greeted with loud applause, and the judge ordered the court to be cleared. Mrs. Carter, the boy’s mother, replying to Mr. Norman Birkett, K.C., who defended, said her son was “a thoroughly good boy,” and attached to her. When in drink Sanderson was a brutal bully. Describing the tragedy, Carter said he brought the knife downstairs to frighten Sanderson, as he had already knocked his-mother and sister down. “I put the knife on the bottom of the stairs and tried to stop him from hittingmy mother,” he continued. “He had threatened to do her in. He knocked me down, and when I got up rushed at me again like a bull. "I picked up the knife and struck blindly at him to protect myself.” Carter said that' when he said he was glad he did it, he meant he was glad he had stopped Sanderson from hitting liis mother again. He did not know- then that Sanderson’s injuries were Serious. At the conclusion of Carter’s evidence Mr. Justice T3wift pointed out that the boy might have been entitled to have resisted by violence Sanderson’s attempt to inflict grievous bodily harm on his mother. Nobody supposed that the boy intended to kill the man.