STRANGE CHARGE OF MURDER.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 334, 16 January 1889, Page 3

STRANGE CHARGE OF MURDER.

I Du>~Li)ix, Jan. 11. JosErn Valentin"!:, a young man, ploughman by occupation, was charged at bhe Supreme Court bo-day with, on the 28th ot October, murdering his illegitimate child near Balclutha. .Sir R. Stoub defended the accused. The Crown Prosecutor, in opening, said the prisoner had strong motive tor desiring to get rid of the child, as its maintenance was a buiden on him. The evidence would show that when the infant was eight days old he called at the house where the mother, Jane Porter, resided, between eight and nine o'clock at night, anu took the child away on horseback after a blight remonstrance, saving he would carry it to his sister, four or five miles oft", with whom he had arranged to keep it. It would be proved that no such arrangement had been made, and that the prisoner, instead _ of going to his sister's, went in the direction of the river, having, he afterwards said, made up hid mind to go to a Mr Sloper, 13 miles oft, and ask him for some money due. When he reached the banks of the Clutha, the prisoner said he got oft and led the horse, that he stumbled, and the horse jumped back, and the child accidentally lell into the river. He waded in to recover what he thought to be the child, but it proved to be only a shawl. The prisoner did not return or go to Eloper's, but travelled all night to his father I*,1 *, 30 miles off. Here he wa-*, or pretended to be, in great grief and a dazed condition, and only some days after gave an account of the occurrence. The police, after investigation, concluded the child's death could not have been accidental, and anested the accused. Sir R. Stout raised the point that there was no case to go to the jury, on the ground that the death of the child was not proved, and if the prisoner's account, which was the only evidenco of death, was accepted as true, the occurrence was accidental. The Judge said he would reserve the point if necessary, and the case went to the jury. Sir R. Stout, in his address for the defence, admitted that the prisoner had acted in a very stupid manner, but the evidence showed he was a particularly stupid man, and had been subject to lits. He elaborated the point a& to no evidence of death. His Honoi said as no body was recovered, ib was a case in which the jury must proceed with caution. In the first place, bhe Crown should ptove that the prisoner's story not only might be, bub must, from the necessity of the case, be untrue. If they failed in that, the prisoner was entitled to be acquitted, but if they succeeded, ib was then for the jury to take the fact of' the untrue story in conjunction wj.bh the other circumstances of the ease and all the acts of accused, and consider whether they were sufficient to prove, beyond all reasonable doubt, that he must have intentionally killed the child. The jury, after an hour and a half's retiremeut, icturned a verdict of " Not guilby."