ARMSTRONG UNMOVED.

Auckland Star, Volume LIII, Issue 129, 2 June 1922, Page 7

ARMSTRONG UNMOVED.

UT- . • r APPEAL AGAINST VERDICT. DISALLOWED BY COURT. i. (Krntn Our Own O-rrespondcnt.) I/JNDON, April 18. In one way Good Friday of 1922 will etaml out in the minds of many. There were no newspapers and there was no nieano of obtaining authentic news ot the verdict on Armstrong. The evening papers of Thursday j{av«> a pood deal ot the last day's proceeding, but even the. last edition* di-.l nut record the fatal "Guilty."

The verdict came at the last witli great =iiddrniuv>. At .5.10 the jury went out to consider it, and it was known, they were to haw tea first, so that seven o'clock was almost the earliest they ""ore expected to return to the Court.

But at 5.58 they were back. Armstrong looked Uγ with desperate hope in hia eyes. Then a deep calm settled down on him: it was almost of relict when he knew the worst.

The prisoner went white l when the foremnn of the jury stammered over the fatal words, but he remained calm when the judpe, much affected, tol<l him that no jurymen who had regard to the oath they had taken could have found n different verdict. The theory of suicide was absurd, the judjre Faid. and he agreed entirely with the finding of the jury. When it was all over, the 'prisoner, who seemed rather to be waiting until the speaking wa« finished than attending to the substance of it. made a military turn to the right and ran downstairs out of sight. The waiting crowd -was more moved, but it is said that once out of range of public sight the doomed man wept bitterly. MO*T CONVINCING EVIDENCE. In the speech for the prosecution and Sn the summing up attention was drawn to the fact that when Mrs. Armstrong developed symptoms of arsenical poisoning in August, 1920, and February, 11>21, her husband was the only other' person •who was -present on both these occasions. If the suicide theory were untenable, who but iMajor Armstrong couM have been the poisoner? Against the euicide suggestion there was placed the evidence of the doctor ami the nurse that Mrs. Armstrong did not wnnt to die; end of the experts who said that ilrs. Armstrong, while unable to lift a cup to her lips, had boon given a trebly fatal dose of arsenic in the last twentyfour hours of her life, and had also suffered from arsenical poisoning before the date suggested by the defence as that of the suicidal act. Another point ■was the illness of Martin, the other Hay solicitor, who had tea with the prisoner and then developed symptoms of acute poisoning. But the clinching argument used against the defence was the alleged futility of their attempts to explain the presence of a dose of arsenic fatal not only to a daisy or a dandelion, but to a human being , , in the pt>cket of the prisoner at the time of his arrest. Referring to the story of making up twenty packets of white arsenic and : dropping the contents down to the roots of dandelions, the judge asked the jiirv: ''Do you believe that?" This question was Mr. Justice Darling's favourite expression. The prisoner had said that when he made his statement to the police he had forgotten about a quantity of white arsenic still in the house. "Do you believe that?" he asked. "If you think he told you a I deliberate falsehood aibout that' what • do you think about the re«t of his evidence—about the denial that he ever gave arsenic to his wife?" There was ! something about this form of question ! which was more convincing than the most emphatic statement could have been. Mr. Curtis Bennett, for the defence, argued that no motive had been proved, ' but on this subject both the judge and the Attorney-General declared motive to be a secondary consideration. Xo , money should have tempted a decent man to such a crime. VERDICT NO SURPRISE. The fact that the judge has exempted ' the jury from service lor a number of years is a measure of the trying nature of this trial, for the case was beset with all those difficulties uf conflicting cvi- j dence, of astonishing feats of memory i by some and of extraordinary reluctance of others to remember anything. All the same the verdict was no surprise to anyone, in view of the positiveness of the expert opinion called by the prosecution and the strong line taken throughout the trial and in his summing up by Mr. Justice Darling. I In spite of the quickness and unanimity of the verdict —only one juryman at the first put "not proven," but almost as soon as he had, joined the eleven in their verdict—the very complication of the trial raises many doubts, especially j as all the evidence is circumstantial. Poison cases always do have this difficulty. The judge said even the Borgias were not seen putting poison in the cup.

Nevertheless that appeal should be wade again.«t the verdict is all to the jjood. The history of the criminal law in England has been that of a steady, if slow, determination to give a prisoner accused on a capital charge every reasonable chance of rebutting the prosecution. For that reason he is allowed his own counsel and his own witnesses, both of which were formerly denied him, and for the same reason his fate cannot now be determined in a single Court if his advisers can find any reasonable ground for appealing against its decision to a superior tribunal. The Court of Criminal Appeal affords a further guarantee of justice in a country to "which the verdict of "Not proven" i» unknown. Kven those who agree as strongly as Mr. JiMieo DarlinS with the jury's verdict would probably like to have it confirmed, if confirm it they did. by a tribunal of minds trained to ■weigh evidence and to ignore rhetoric, from whatever side it comes. ARMSTRONG HANGED. A cablegram dated May 25 stated that thp Attorney-General had refused an application 'by Armstrong's counspl for leave to appeal to the House of Lords against his conviction. Armstrong ■was hanged on Wednesday, May 31, and. according to our cable news, maintained his innocence to the last.