THE WAITARA TRAGEDY.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2452, 17 March 1909, Page 5

THE WAITARA TRAGEDY.

SUPREME COURT PROCEEDINGS. (Press Association.) NEW PLYMOUTH, March 16. The Supreme Court sessions opened to-day before Mr. Justice Chapman. In tlie course of his charge to the Grand Jury, His Honor,, referring to the charge of murder against Dr. Goode, said that the important case this sitting was a, charge of murder against a medical man who recently lived at Waitara. The inquiry they had to make was a limited one. It was really an inquiry as to whether there was prima facie evidence that this act of shooting, whereby the deceased met her death, was the act of accused. It might be that when tlie matter came to be inquired into circumstances would be brought forward to' suggest the drunken condition of the accused, or even an insane condition, hut he had to tell them, for the purpose of the discharge of their duties, that the contention of drunkenness —intoxication — was no excuse whatever for crime, anil that, so far as insanity was concerned, if any such question was suggested here, that might be a matter of defence, but it was not the duty cf the Grand Jury to inquire into matters of defence at all. Wlrat they had to inquire into was whether the evidence made out a prima fqcie case and rendered it proper that the case should be publicly tried, and the guilt or innocence of the accused established. The evidence would show that accused went to the house where the deceased resided, that he said something to her, made a proposition to her, and received a denial, and that thereupon, without any interval, he fired two shots into her neck, the result of one or both of which was that in the course of a lew days she succumbed to her injuries. These simple facts were sufficient legally to constitute the crime with which the man was charged, and it would not be their duty to inquire further than to ascertain whether there was prima facie evidence to shov that he in fact fired the shots that struck this woman, and that she mether death in this way. The Grand Jury returned a true bill against Dr. Goode, and Ins trial vill open to-morrow morning.