The Verdict of an Auckland Jury.

Te Aroha News, Volume II, Issue 80, 13 December 1884, Page 5

The Verdict of an Auckland Jury.

Curious stories have been often told respecting the doings of juries when locked up to consider the verdict, but the following novel mode of coming to a decision, if not new, is at least, amusing. Ah it would spoil the yarn to print it otherwise than as related, we give it in the man's own words :—: — " Gentlemen," Baid the speaker to a company of us who had assembled at Walker's Imperial Hotel, chatting over oldtimor, "I was pursuing the even tenor of my way, when I found myself in Auckland carrying on the peaceful avocation of a land agent, including the lucrative business of supplying the rebel Maoris with leaden sash weights, wax matches, and eyelet holes." " What was that for V demanded one of the company "Well, you ccc," was the calm reply, " gunpowder, bullets, and percussion caps were contraband of war at the time ; and I had no desire for a neck-stretcher at the hands of Sir Duncan Cameron. It was before Rangariri, gentlemen. So I instructed the Maoi'is how to make rifle bullets out of sash weights, and you would scarcely believe how admirably the tops of wax matches cut off and inserted into eyelets answered the purpose of percussion caps. But to return to my subject. One day a constable paid me a visit, with a summons for the jury. I went, saw, and got run into the box >v ith eleven others, empanelled to try two Maoris, Hori Tapa and Matui, for rubbing oub a settler's family up the Waikato. The main evidence was that of the only survivor, a boy, who had been tomahawked and left for dead, but who distinctly swore to the two men in the dock as being the slaughterers of his relatives. The Judge (old Sir George Arney) charged us dead against the niggers, and we retired to consider the verdict. Now, I was doing a big business with the natives at that time, and it wouldn't do for to be one of a dozen that scragged two promising specimens of the race. Five others, Irom business reasons, held the same view ; but the remaining six, including the foreman, were dead on for a conviction. We wrangled, smoked, sang songs, and tried other ways to pass away tho time ; but thore we were at 5 o'clock, six of one and half-a-dozen of the other. At last the Judge sent in to say that if we were not agreed at 10 o'clock wo mu&t be locked up all night. That fixed our foreman's flint. He was a master stonemason ; had the contract for a new building under way, and about fifty men working for him. " Look here, boys," he said, " It's plain c can't ayree ; we're 100 evenly divided for that. Now, I tell you whit it is. If I'm locked up to-night "—(it was on a Saturday) — " ther'll be the devil to pay with my mien. I'll loose a lot of money. Tell you what we'll do. We'll toss for it. Guilty or Not guily ; and I'll stand a supper afterwards round at the Freemasons." Suiting the action to the word, he cut off a button from his flannel jacket. It was one of those big mother-o'-pearl buttons, common on such articles, black one side, white on the other. Selecting me as the champion of the " not guilty " crowd — the foreman was straight for hanging 'em— he continued — " Now then, we're all agreeable — Black, the niggsrs goes loose ; tvhite, they swings. Up it goes." I looked at the button to see all fair. Up went the said button, and came down Black. We went into Court. "Gentlemen of the Jury, are you all agreed upon your verdict ?" says old OBrien the Judge's Associate. " We is," says the foreman. " How say you gentlemen of the jury, do you find the prisoners at the bar guilty or not guilty ?" asked the deputy beak. "Not guilty." They wore turned loose, and rubbed noses outside with their mates. Next day I saw them selling peaches about the streets. " But were they guilty ?" asked one of the company. "Well, it has turned out that they were not," replied our friend the narrator. "Three days afterwards the real culprits were taken with a mob of others at Ring's Redoubt, and a swagman who had been hiding in the bush while the tomahawking of the settler's family was going on, came forward and identified them by a peculiar pattern tattooed on their arms— the mark of the Nguruawahia chiefs." " What a fortunate interposition of Providence in favour of the innocent !" exclaimed the only righteous one in our midst. " You bet !" exclaimed the relator of the story, quietly. "I had the handling of that button just before it was shied up. I had also some liquid lamp-black in my coat pocket. Shouldn't wonder if the white side of the button got a bit smutted in the confusion. Yes, mate, your moral's very proper and pretty . "