CLAREVILLE SHOOTING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 July 1943, Page 2

CLAREVILLE SHOOTING

SUPREME COURT HEARING CONVICTION ENTERED. REMAND FOR SENTENCE. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. The shooting of a taxi driver, Richard Andrew Webber, at Clareville in the early hours of April 25 resulted in Bennett Coles Middleton, seaman and labourer, aged 18. being found guilty by a jury in the Supreme Court, Wellington, yesterday of causing actual bodily harm in circumstances that, if death had been caused, he would have been guilty of manslaughter. Middleton had been charged also on alternative counts with attempted murder, with attempting to render the taxi driver incapable of resistance in an attempt- to rob him, and with assault with intent to rob. The jury did not return verdicts on these counts, but Mr Justice Johnston, who was on the bench, directed that verdicts of not guilty be recorded. He was remanded for sentence.

The Crown Prosecutor, Mr W. H. Cunningham, outlined the case. Mr Cunningham’s outline was supported by evidence, but no evidence was called by Mr C. A. L. Treadwell, counsel for accused.

Mr Treadwell submitted that though accused had admitted intention to commit a crime there was no proof of intention to murder. Further, the ineffectiveness of the weapon, the fact that accused had had the car stopped near houses, and other points in the Crown evidence indicated that it had not been accused’s intention to shoot Webber.

The jury was 95 minutes considering its verdict.