TO THE SCAFFOLD.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 23, 28 January 1928, Page 3 (Supplement)

TO THE SCAFFOLD.

TWO APPEALS FAIL.

Three of 12 persona, one a woman, in the "condemned" cells in various prisons throughout Britain, appealed to the Court of Criminal Appeal. Two of the appeals were dismissed. These concerned Bertram Kirby, a clerk, who was sentenced at Lincolnshire Assizes for the murder of his wife at Louth and John Thomas Dunn, a Durham miner, who murdered his wife at Sacriston. When sentenced Dunn made an impassioned speech from the dock in which he said: "After hearing little children give evidence against their father, it is time the law of this country was changed." In both Kirby's and Dunn's appeals the question of their insanity was raised without avail.

In the third case, the appellant was Edward Lloyd, an unemployed miner, who was convicted at Durham Assizes for killing a police constable at North Hylton. Lloyd had suffered from shell-shock and the jury had recommended him to mercy.

The Lord Chief Justice said it was unfortunate that the judge. Mr. Justice Roche, had stated in summing up" that of two possible verdicts—"guilty, with a recommendation to mercy," or "guilty, but insane"—he should support the former. But for the passages already referred to the jury probably would have returned a special verdict.

The Court of Appeal, however, were satisfied that Lloyd, althouTh guiltv. was insane at the time. He would therefore be kept in custody as a criminal lunatic and the sentence passed at the trial would be squashed. Found guilty of murdering his James Gillon, aged 30, a gardener, was sentenced to death at Lewes Assizes. Gillon and 'his sister Annie, aged 27, were employed at Lower Beeding, near Horsham. One Saturday they quarrelled. There was a struggle, and Gillion stabbed his sister twice with a jack-knife, and cut her throat with a razor: He also attempted suicide by cutting his throat. Dr. F. R. P. Taylor, medical superintendent of Hellingly Mental Hospital, said he considered Gillon was a high-grade mental defective, having what was known medically as the inferiority complex. "I think he was insane," said the doctor. "He did not show the slightest emotion when the dying depositions of his sister were read over to him."