Green v R [1939] HCA 4

aot BR Cabal ye VR (one er Gait Hea sige eu", 2a 61 C.L.B.) OF AUSTRALIA 167

{HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA.]

GREEN . : ' E ' fs i y . APPLICANT ;

AND

THE KING . i ' : A £ D . RESPONDENT.

ON APPEAL FROM THE COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEAL OF VICTORIA.

evidence—Crimes Act 1928 (Vict.) (No. 3664), sec, 594,

The chief evidence implicating a prisoner upon a charge of murder consisted \iprmownNe, in a piece of paper which shortly before the date of the crime had been in his far, 21, possession and was found beside the bodies of the victims. Some further a

i : Lath Cd. circumstances were also relied upon by the prosecution, and among them the ijch, Starke,

discovery near the scene of the crime of a bicycle pump which might have \¢7onardy, belonged to a bicycle ridden by the prisoner on the night of the crime. The Dieyele, which on the day after the crime was seen to have lost its pump, belonged to a boy who swore at the coroner's inquest that the pump was not his and who described his own pump in terms indicating that it differed in appearance from the one which had been found. Later another pump was produced to the police by persons living in the vicinity of the prisoner's house as having been found by their children close at hand ; it corresponded with the description given by the boy at the inquest, but it would not fit between the attachments on the bicycle. The Crown Prosecutor made the proofs of this evidence available to the prisoner's counsel but told him that he would not call it or the boy. The prisoner's counsel elicited from a police witness the fact that the second pump had been handed in as found at a specified place, and the prisoner swore that it was similar to the pump belonging to the bicycle and that he had lost that pump on the day of, but before the time of, the commission of the crime. The prisoner's counsel did not call the boy or the evidence of the finding of the pump. The prisoner was convicted and appealed on the ground that this further evidence was material and that,