Solomon Islander

Wins Fiji

Appeal Case

From a Fiji Correspondent The Fiji Court of Appeal sitting Suva in January allowed an appeal a Solomon Islander, Mariano 'ai, against a conviction and sen tee of three years imprisonment r breaking into a house on August -26, 1959, and stealing £304. The ’me was allegedly committed at mini, BSIP. The High Court of the estern Pacific on October 8, 1962, ntenced Mariano.

IHE appeal court, in its judgment, . said that the house of lain ower had been broken into in 1959 id a quantity of articles, including heavy cash safe, were removed. )lice investigations were fruitless, id no information about the person sponsible was obtained for three ;ars.

Then, in August, 1962, the police terviewed a man named Antonio rnrai about allegations said to have ;en made against him by Mariano iat Antonio had been guilty of steal g money.

Antonio had then told the police iat Mariano had carried out the jrglary at Gower’s house and that 2 (Antonio) had helped to commit le crime.

Denied It Mariano, when interviewed by the olice, denied the charge, and con nued to deny it, but both he and mtonio were charged with burglary.

When the matter came up in the ligh Court, Antonio pleaded guilty nd received a sentence of two years’ aol. Antonio then gave evidence gainst Mariano and gave a circum tantial account of how Mariano had lanned the burglary, and how the wo of them carried it out.

There was no other evidence con iccting Mariano with the crime, ex ept that of Selesitino Chele, who aid that some time in 1959 Mariano ;ave him £l6. But Selestino’s evi dence was not convincing and had ieen rejected by the trial judge.

Antonio also said in evidence that Mariano’s brother, John Wahioro, re ceived £2O from Mariano as part of he proceeds of the burglary, but Wahioro in evidence denied that.

After reviewing the law relating to jncorroborated evidence, the Appeal Court said that Mariano’s case was one where it had to be strictly ap plied, as there was no evidence con necting him with the crime except the

statement of an accomplice. That same accomplice, it had to be re membered, had kept silent on the subject for three years. Only when it was reported that he was accused, falsely according to him, of the theft of money, he immediately implicated Mariano in a burglary which he (Antonio) admittedly committed three years before.

There were grounds, as conceded by the Crown, for considering the possibility that the accomplice, in making his allegation against Mariano, may have been actuated by malice, a desire to seek revenge for the wrong which he thought had been done to him. It would have been just

as easy for Antonio to make the al legation about any other person who had been in the vicinity three years before. It was conceivable that he could have carried out the burglary by himself, as he was strong enough, which Mariano was not, to carry away the cash safe.

The appeal judges said they felt that the trial judge, had he applied strictly the law relating to evidence by an accomplice, would have

acquitted Mariano.

They also considered that the trial judge was not entitled to draw any conclusion from the fact that Mariano had made an unsworn state ment from the dock.