A RECENT COURT CASE.

Waipa Post, Volume I, Issue 25, 11 July 1911, Page 2

A RECENT COURT CASE.

TO THE EDITOR. SIR, —In the interests of ’law and order I would like to call attention to what took place in the local court last Friday, i have no knowledge whatever of the complainant, who asked for what is supposed to be the right of every Englishman reasonable protection from insult —but I felt sorry for him and his witnesses as the case proceeded. Even the magistrate was compelled to state that the defendant had on two different occasions “grossly insu’ted the complainant,” and yet the presiding official of the court allowed the defendant to cast culumny and insult on all and sundry. Even the magistrate himself got, what he richly deserved, most neatly turned down, to use a not very elegant term. I may say, Sir, that 1 got a very great surprise. I had always thought that our courts of justice were the embodiment of dignity and order, but what i saw last Friday disillusioned me. Witnesses, policeman, lawyer, magistrate —all were the butt of the defendant’s ridicule, and what was supposed to be justice degenerated into a screaming farce. Again and again everybody in the court was convulsed with laughter. This is all very well for a funny picture show, but for a court of justice it was, to say the least, extremely out of place. It is to hoped that, in the interests of all parties, the magistrate will not again allow, such a scene to take place, unless he wishes the court to be turned into a third-rate variety show. —I am, etc., ’ : . Justice,:^