Williams v Douglas [1949] HCA 40

High Court of Australia Latham C.J. Rich, Dixon and McTiernan JJ. Williams v Douglas [1949] HCA 40

ORDER Application for special leave refused.

Cur. adv. vult.

The following written judgments were delivered:—

Sept. 15 Latham C.J.,Dixon and McTiernan JJ.

This is an application for special leave to appeal from an order of the Full Court of the Supreme Court of Western Australia making absolute an order nisi to review a decision of a stipendiary magistrate given in the Court of Petty Sessions at Perth. The matter before the stipendiary magistrate is a complaint charging the applicant Williams with an offence under s. 36 of the Gold Buyers Act 1921-1948 W.A.. The charge was that the applicant had gold in his possession or control and when required by the complainant, a member of the police force, to satisfy him that the applicant had come lawfully by such gold, failed to do so. The order of the Supreme Court remitted the complaint to the magistrate with a direction that possession or control by the defendant, that is, the applicant, of the gold, the subject of the complaint, had been sufficiently established by the complainant and that the defendant should therefore be called upon pursuant to s. 36 of the Gold Buyers Act to prove to the satisfaction of the magistrate that he honestly came by the gold.

The facts proved in evidence were these. The applicant lives at Cue. He arrived in Perth on 1st March 1949 and put up at the Victoria Hotel. He brought with him three small gold bars of bullion weighing about sixty ounces. The complainant, who was a detective sergeant, while in company with a police constable saw the applicant in the street at about half-past nine on the following evening. He told him that he had reason to believe that he was dealing in illicit gold. This the applicant denied. The detective sergeant asked him where he was staying and expressed a desire to look through his rooms, to which the applicant raised no objection. The two policemen made a quick search and left, accompanied by the applicant. They returned twenty minutes later. The constable and the applicant re-entered the room; the detective sergeant went to the hotel bathroom, which was some distance from the bedroom. He searched the bathroom and found underneath the bath near the outlet a brown paper package containing the three pieces of gold. To find it he went down on his knees and looked under the bath with an electric torch. The gold was behind the outlet and could not be seen from above. He returned to the room and questioned the applicant as to his knowledge of the gold, telling him where he had found it. The applicant denied all knowledge of the gold, but upon the detective sergeant's pointing out the name of the applicant's employers upon the paper and saying that he proposed to get in touch with them the applicant said "It is no use beating about the bush, it is my gold." They went to the police office, where the applicant repeated that it was his gold and that he was going to plead guilty to it. He said that he identified it by the numbering on the tape with which the bars were tied up, and that nobody else was interested in it. The evidence did not explain why the detective sergeant went to the bathroom to search. It seems to have been assumed, both by the magistrate and by the Full Court, that after leaving the hotel on the first occasion he had obtained some further information from some undisclosed source.