SUPREME COURT.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVI, Issue 4, 5 June 1913, Page 5

SUPREME COURT.

TIMARU SESSIONS. Per Press Association. Timaru, Last- Night. The Supreme Court criminal session opened to-day before Mr. Justice De&niston, who congratulated the Grand Jury on the lightness and comparative unimportance of the calendar. To-day two cases were disposed of, both accused being acquitted. One man was charged with breaking into and stealing from the railway parcels office at Timaru. The evidene, according to the judge evidence, according, to the judge, amounted merely to strong suspicion. In. the other case a man Waß accused of wilfully making a false declaration'to the. Royal Insurance Company of the value of gobds destroyed by fire at Mount. Somers. His explanation was that thestatement was made up by his wife, whohad bought the articles, and she signed' it without looking at it. Her list totalled up to £4OB, and his policy was for £175. The local agent of the Company valued the goods at £220 before the fire, and he saw no reason to reduce it now. To-morrow will be taken up with the case of C. H. Besley, for manslaughter, by culpably negligent driving of a motor car, with the result that a postal officer on a bicycle was run into and killed, t Commenting on this case to the Grand ' Jury, His Honor said that there, were several degrees of manslaughter. Thi» was a painful case, in which it was impossible not to sympathise with the accused, who was 9, respectable man, against whom there was no suggestion of malice, and who probably had already felt more keenly the consequence of the accident than any punishment that might be inflicted. The Grand Jury, however, Bhould not be influenced by that consideration. The grounds of the charge were that the accused was on the wrong' side of the ?oad, that his was insufficiently lighted, and tl|&t 4® did not sound his horn. The Grand Jury found a true bill. , tINVERCARGILL SESSIONS. • • Invercargill, Last Night. '• The re-trial of Erank James Mcfarr • lane, charged with assault with intent to commit rape, in which case the pre- • yious jury disagreed; wss proceeded with • to-day. The jury, alter a retirement Of . » two and a-half hours,' returned a verr, diet of guilty, and prisoner was sen-" tenced to three years'; imprisonment with hard labor. ■ft i 4 - V -