JUDGMENT IN MUNN CASE

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1012, 1 July 1930, Page 1

JUDGMENT IN MUNN CASE

Appeal Courts Decision

EVIDENCE OF THE CHILDREN

Held Admissible By Judges

WELLINGTON, Today. FOLLOWING is the text of the Appeal Court’s judgment in the Munn case, as delivered by the Chief Justice, Sir Michael Myers. The remaining' judges briefly expressed agreement with the Chief Justice.

“The prisoner was convicted of the murder of his wife on February 11, 1930, the case for the Crown being that he poisoned her by the administration of strychnine. “Certain evidence was admitted at the trial, the admissibility of which was questioned by counsel for the prisoner, and the learned judge has stated a case for the opinion of this Court as to whether that evidence was properly admitted. “The evidence in question is that of three witnesses, a son and two daughters of the prisoner by a former wife whom he had divorced. The son was in February, 1930, nearly 22 years of age, and the daughters were at that time 19 and 17 years of age respectively. These three had for a period of several years lived in the house of the father and stepmother up to a point of time, in the case of the daughters three years before the stepmother’s death, and in the case of the son 12 months before that event. “Their evidence was tendered with the object of showing a persistent course, over a continuous period of several years, of unkiDdness, cruelty, and ill-will on the part of the prisoner toward the deceased. “Mr. Northcroft, counsel for the defence, attacks the admissibility of the evidence on the ground that there is no logical association between the facts sought to be proved and the typo of crime charged, or, to adopt the language of Kennedy, J., in Rex v. Bond (1906), 2 K. 8., 389, at p. 400, that the prior acts did not, in point of their historical and circumstantial connection, form inseparable parts of the transaction which the jury had to investigate. He also contends that the conduct spoken of by the witnesses is so remote in point of time as to make the evidence inadmissible. I take the true principle applicable in a case of this kind to be that stated by Kennedy, J., in Rex. v. Bond (cit. sup.), at p. 401, and by Lord Atkinson in Rex. v. Ball (1911).

“In the former case Air. Justice Kennedy said: ‘The relations of a murdered or injured man to his assailant. so far as they may reasonably be explanatory of the conduct of accused as charged in the indictment are properly admitted to proof as integral parts of the history of the alleged crime for which accused is on his trial.’ “This statement was referred to by Lord Loreburn in Rex v. Ball, at P. 68 and Lord Atkinson said in the same case, ‘Surely in an ordinary prosecution for murder you can prove previous acts or words of the accused to show that he entertained feelings of enmity toward deceased and that is evidence, not merely o c a maliciou? mind, with which he killed deceased, but of the fact that he killed him. You can give in evidence the enmity of accused toward deceased to prove that the accused took deceased’s life. The evidence of motive necessarily goes to prove the fact of homicide by accused as well as malice aforethought, inasmuch as it is more probable that men are killed by those who have some motive for killing them than by those who have not. TIRED OF HIS WIFE “There was certain evidence adduced to which no objection was or could have been taken and which tended to show that at a later than that spoken of by the son and* daughters. prisoner was tired of his wife. For example, when prisoner was informed by the police he was under arrest, he said, ‘I told you I bought poison. 1 called the doctor, and I did everything for the damned woman/ Much more important than that, however, is the fact that about the beginning of October, 1929, four months before the data of his wife's death, he inserted the following advertisement in an Auckland newspaper: ‘Gent, 40, lonely, wishes meet companionable woman, without means preferable. View mat rimony.—Write, H, 6215.” (Continued on Page 12.)