NSW: Normie Rowe assault charge goes over to March

AAP General News (Australia)
12-07-1998
NSW: Normie Rowe assault charge goes over to March

SYDNEY, Dec 7 AAP - Lawyers for entertainer Normie Rowe today failed to get an assault
charge against him thrown out of court.

Rowes solicitor Piet Baird told Ryde Local Court the defence had not received the
prosecution's brief of evidence, which a police witness said was faxed to his office last
June.

Rowe was charged by summons last April with assaulting Geoffrey Bailey on January 28 at
Epping, in north-western Sydney.

Mr Baird submitted that as the charge was common assault, the public interest did not
warrant Rowe being brought back to court again at a later date.

The case was due to be heard today by magistrate Laurence Lawson, who found there appeared
to have been a technical fault somewhere, but that he could not determine what had occurred.

No details of the charge have been revealed in court, but when the magistrate invited both
sides to give him an outline so he could consider the seriousness of the matter, they declined
to do so.

"It is, generally speaking, in the public interest for all criminal matters to be
determined by hearing on merits rather than go off in some technical fault," Mr Lawson said.

He adjourned the matter for hearing at the same court on March 11.

Outside the court Rowe, whose date of birth was listed on court documents as between 1946
and 1951, told journalists he would continue to defend the charge.

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KEYWORD: ROWE

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