Smith v The Queen [1957] HCA 3

High Court of Australia McTiernan, Williams, Webb and Taylor JJ. Smith v The Queen [1957] HCA 3

ORDER Appeal allowed. Convictions and sentences quashed. Judgment of acquittal on the indictment.

Cur. adv. vult.

The following written judgments were delivered:—

Jan. 21, 1957 McTiernan J.

On 27th July 1956, at Rabaul, the prisoner, Frederick Phillip Smith, was found guilty by the Chief Justice of the Territory of Papua and New Guinea of wilfully murdering Adela Woo and Leo Wattemena. The mode of trial was by the court without a jury. The prisoner was sentenced on 30th July 1956, by judgment that sentence of death be recorded. He has appealed from these convictions and sentences by leave granted under s. 24 of the Judiciary Ordinance 1921-1938 of the Territory. The grounds of appeal are misreception of self-incriminating statements made by the prisoner to the police and insufficiency of proof of guilt.

There was strong circumstantial evidence that Adela Woo and Leo Wattemena were murdered on a golf links at Rabaul in the early hours of Sunday, 20th May 1956. The girl was dead when her body was found at about 6 o'clock that morning. The man was unconscious when he was found. He did not regain consciousness and he died on 23rd May 1956. The proof that the prisoner murdered Adela Woo and Leo Wattemena rested entirely upon admissions and confessions which the prisoner made before the police. On 21st May 1956 he was questioned by the police as to his movements after both deceased left him on the previous Saturday night. He orally confessed this: "I followed Leo and the girl out to the green and when I saw them lying on the ground I went mad and hit them". Then he wrote a narrative of the events prior to their leaving him on that Saturday night. This accords with the evidence of those events. The written statement concludes with this confession: " so Tom and Jack went to the club and Leo and his girl frind so I folled him they went to the green and I went up and flag Leo because I was out my mind. I hit him with an iron pag I found in the grass. was the girl a start to cry out so I hait her to and they bought her on the ground so I took the girl and bery half of her I cared Leo into the busses and I trod the pag away I went home to bed". According to the evidence of the police he made another oral confession on the same day at the golf links. That confession was: "I saw him lying on top of her and I hit him. The girl cried out and I hit her." These are clear confessions of guilt. They fit exactly the circumstantial evidence of the manner in which the murders were committed and the bodies disposed of. This evidence is summed up by the Chief Justice and I do not repeat it. The murdered man had a deep wound on the back of the head and the girl a fracture of the skull cap. These injuries were proved to be fatal by the evidence of the doctor who made the post-mortem examinations. There were other injuries on each body: the man was more extensively injured than the girl.