SUPREME COURT, DUNEDIN.

Cromwell Argus, Volume IV, Issue 179, 15 April 1873, Page 6

SUPREME COURT, DUNEDIN.

The Criminal Sitttings of tlie above Court commenced on Monday, April 7, before His Honor Mr Justice Chapman. We make the following condensation from our Dunedin exchanges : Eight cases were set down for trial, in five of which the Grand Jury found true bills. In the other three there had not been time to prepare indictments. The first case taken was THE MORAY PLACE SHOOTING CASE. Thomas Ryan was charged with having on the 4th .January last, shot at, with intent to kill, James Farrell, detective officer. The prisoner pleaded Not Guilty. Mr B. C. Haggit prosecuted for the Crown, and Mr Barton defended the accused. Mr Haggitt proceeded to address the Jury. After commenting upon the evidence which would be brought before them, he suggested certain motives which would have been likely to influence the prisoner towards committing the crime. Farrell, he said, had been in the Force for some ten years, and had amassed property to the value of £6OO or £7OO. A reward of £3OO was also coming to him from Sydney for the arrest in Dunedin of a defaulting bank clerk from there. Farrell's widow would also have been entitled, if it had been said he was shot while in the execution of his duty, to a compensation of £3OO. All this the prisoner, by marrying Farrell's widow, (and he would show they were on loving terms,) would come into possession of. Then, also, Mr Haggitt suggested, the prisoner might have headed a public subscription, and interested himself in getting it well filled ; and by these means he might have made quite a good thing in a monetary point of view, of murdering Farrell and marrying Mrs Farrell. Mr Haggitt then went on to say (we quote from the Times) —"Having made these suggestions to you, I will read some extracts from the letters on which I have been commenting, as showing the motive of the prisoner. I shall not read the letters in their entirety. Only one of the letters is from the prisoner to Mrs Farrell; the others are letters written by Mrs Farrell to the prisoner ; and these letters, as I have already told you, were discovered all together in the prisoner's box. The discovery of the letter from the prisoner to Mrs Farrell was made in this way : On one occasion Farrell found the prisoner's likeness in his wife's workbox. She made some excuse, which apparently satisfied Farrell at the time. She stated ilia*

she had stolen it from a Mrs Gilligan, at Palmerston. Farrell's suspicions were however aroused, and one day he went to the Post-office and found a letter addressed to his wife by the prisoner, and which is the only letter from the prisoner to Mrs Farrell that we are possessed of ; but the remainder of the correspondence shows that he had been writing to her, for her letters speak of his letters to her. Mrs Farrell urged the prisoner in nearly every letter to burn her letters. In this way she appears to have exercised more caution than the prisoner. Fortunate would it have been for him if he had taken her advice, and thus have removed the very strong evidence against him now. No doubt Mrs Farrell, exercising more caution than the prisoner, burned the letters which she received from him. At any rate none have been found, and the only letter from the prisoner to Mrs Farrell which we can produce, is the letter which Farrell himself intercepted." We have not space for the letters—one from Ryan to Mrs Farrell, and twelve from Mrs Farrell to Ryan. In his letter, he calls her his " Delia," and signs himself "yours, most lovingly, Dudo." Her letters abound with passionate expressions of love. Here are extracts from some of them : . . . Oh, my own duck, won't you let me kiss— oh, such a lot of times—when you come. You said you would always love me, duck. There is a grand skame on foot. If I could carry it out, it would at least throw us together for some months—perhaps longer. He wants me to go home in the summer—that is, if he could afford it—for the good of my health, for I am far from well. If that could be, I would have you come down, and lay up sick, and get compensation, and go away to America, as it were to your sisters, but to wait for me in Melbourne. Oh, pettie, if you could manage that we would be at least happy for some time. When we get to London I could make excuses for remaining there for a long time, under the pretence of bad health, and we could be together all the time. It would be like heaven, and to be there none would watch us. . . Your love is all in this world I live for. .-I believe 1 would be dead long ago only for it. Oh, darling, it is the silver border to all my dark clouds. Oh, my own dear pet, it is the only ray of sunshine that brightens all my misery. . . . My heart and soul is yours, love, as long as the smallest particle of breath is left in my body. Yes, my own darling, you are my life, my hope, my joy ; and without you, pettie, I cannot think of living. Oh, Dado, what would all the world, without you it all be blank to me. Pray for your pettie, love, and be of good cheer, and I will pray for you. How I wish I was near you this very minute. Do not study the spelling or writing—only the words, pettie. ... 1 am so glad you love me, as you used to do. Oh, my darling, it is the only thing I live for. I would be dead long ago, only for you. 1 am so glad you love me, Dudo. Oh, if I was near you, how I would whispsr that with my little head resting on your shoulders. I often did in the days gone by, and 1 hope will again soon. You are my day dream, the dazzling vision, the silver border to all my dark clouds. You are my love, my pat, husband. . . Oh Dudo, it is so cruel to be kept here in misery when I could be happy with you, if for one hour even, or half an hour, or if I could only say Dudo, and then tear me away only one little tiny kiss. Oh, a child never longed for its mother's breast more than I do to be near you. . . . One pressure of that gentle hand of thine is worth a lifetime with others ; one kiss from those soft lips, one look from those soft eyes, that speak from the soul, a moment pressed to that manly breast, is worth years of devotion from others. And so forth, and so forth, through the whole of them. Farrell was then examined, and repeated the evidence he gave previously. In reference to love affairs between his wife and Ryan, he said he had forbidden Ryan to visit at his house since May, 1870, in consequence of something which he then saw between them. In the Alliance Hotel, he had seen his wife sitting on Ryan's knee. Since then, on certain occasions, he had watched prisoner going into hishouse, and had listened to the talk of love. One night—the third running on which he planted himself—he went in and interrupted their conversation. He took a revolver with him, intending to "make the man, if he had done anything improper, take a knife and cut off his own two ears, and then 1 would turn him out." He had taken a drink with Ryan on the day of assault. He said, "1 wish to explain how I was on speaking terms with Ryan after turning him from my house. My wife asked me to speak to the prisoner, in order to prevent people from passing remarks, and to keep her from disgrace. In order to hide myself, and to hide my wife's folly, I spoke to him like a man. I had no ill-feeling towards him, because she had promised me that she would give him up, and that she would not speak to him any more. He had requested the Commissioner of Police to keep the prisoner from Dunedin, and Ryan was consequently ordered to Southland. In June, 1872, the prisoner was dismissed, and returned to Dunedin." Farrell's direct and cross examination were not concluded until Tuesday morning. Other witnesses were then examined. The only important addition to former evidence was that of Humphreys, who now stated that he had distinctly heard Farrell call out, " Ryan has murdered me." Sub-Inspector Mallard's evidence contained many important particulars. Mr Barton put him under a searching cross-examination with a view to discover whether he was not possessed of information that could seriously damage the case for the Crown, to the effect that Ryan had been seen at the Water of Leith Hotel about the time the shooting took place. The statement made to Mallard by a woman of the town, named Sarah White, would, he swore, affect the prisoner's whereabouts only after 12 o'clock. An individual had made certain statements to him regard-

ing tho prisoner's whereabouts shortly .after the shooting, which woiild help the prisoner's defence greatly; but after half-an-hour'j cross-questioning, the individual declined to identify Ryan from among others. Conse. quently, Mallard could put no faith in hia testimony, and had thrown it on one side, The witness had found a photograph of Par. rell, and one of Mrs Farrell, in prisoner's room. On Wednesday, Mr Barton proceeded to call witnesses for the defence. Patrick Keligher, landlord of the pean Hotel, where prisoner stayed, said when prisoner came home on the night of the shoot* ing—a little after one a.m.—there was no. thing unusual about his manner. He in.' formed prisoner that the police charged hid with shooting Farrell, whereupon the prisoner exhibited what Keligher considered genuine surprise, llyan proposed to go to the police. On their journey to the station, the prisoner seemed to be annoyed at the charge. Heber Hewson, an ex-Sergeant of Police wa3 at the Water of Leith Hotel on the ni«ht of the 4th January. Ryan came to that Hotel between twenty minutes and half-past eleven. There were no symptoms in the prisoner's appearance of having exerted him. sell Sarah White brought news of Farrell being shot while Ryan was there. Every, booy present looked upon the report as a meie lark. The prisoner also seemed to do 1 so, and evinced no excitement whatever about the matter. Filliam Yielding, a coachman, said prisoner" came to the Water of Leith Hotel be* twejn a quarter and twenty minutes past eleven. Mr Barton then addressed the jury on be. half of the prisoner. He commenced by directing their attention to three remarkable cases in which he, as a lawyer, had been con< cerred. The first case was that of Job Johnson, tried for the murder of Yorkeyj the second was that of Reichelt, tried i$ arson. In both of these cases, evidence w& remirkably strong in favour of the presumed guil; of the prisoners ; but in both, it has beer, proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that the prisoners, although things looked blaci enough for both of them, were perfectly innocent. The theory put forward by Mr 3aggitt regarding monetary motives on the jrisoner's part, almost took his breath away; as a legal curiosity he thought it should be fumed and glazed. As regarded the mo« tive of love for Farrell's wife on Ryan's part, it was perfectly clear, from her letters, that if he wanted the woman he had only to cry "Come," and she would have eloped with Mm. But the fact was that his feeling \va» not so strong as hers. At his own request be: hid been sent to Hampden, and rather than come to Dunedin, he gave up Is. a day. The prisoner had evidently tried to overcome the illicit love between Farrell's wife and himself. The love motive was thus done away with, Then the prisoner's conduct on the day of the shooting was not that of a person who intended to commit murder. He had been perfectly cool; played billiards, and showed himself in the street up to the very minute of it. The attempted murder was comn.itted at 20 minutes past eleven, and witnesses had sworn Ryan was at the Water of Leith at that time. Farrell had sworn positively to Ryan ; but in the dark, with the smoke of the pistol in his eyes and the report in his ears, it was quite likely that Farrell was mistaken. Farrall also said, when he heard the steps fM; he thought they were those of a woman. Mr Barton had shovn that Ryan had no motive whatever ii shooting Farrell ; if anybody had, Mrs Far rell had—although he did not suggest such i thing. But her letters showed that she ha< been living for years past in the most perfec misery. In concluding, he asked the Juryti remember that in a recent case [referring t Reichelt's] Farrell's evidence was contradict© by witness after witness, and that in rem to most important facts. Mr Haggitt replied. In the course of hi address, he pointed out that Mrs Farrel could not have committed the deed, fo directly after the last shot was fired, she liai opened the door to Farrell in her nightdress His Honor snmmed up. He pointed out, in reference to the appearance of Ryan at the Water of Leith Hotel at 20 minutes pastil,; that Ryan had been seen walking leisurely! in Princes-street at 5 minutes past 11, and it would not be easy for him to get to the Wate of Leith Hotel by 20 minutes past unless he got into a cab, and there was no evidence thai he did that. The jury retired to consider their verdict at a quarter past 5 p.m. on Wednesday. No having come to a decision on Thursday morn ing, they were discharged. Ryan is to b tried again on tho 21st inst. A telegram in the Arrow Observer say eight of the jury were for a verdict of guiltj and four opposed.