INNOCENT.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 171, 21 July 1928, Page 9

INNOCENT.

OSCAR SLATER. "SERVED LIFE TERM. Jury Misdirected At Trial 19 Years Ago. CONVICTED ON SUSPICION. (Acstr.i lla ri I'r-ss .\s*-n - United Service.) (Received 9.50 a.m.) LONDON, July 20. The Hi.ah Court at Edinburgh, in which five .judges were associated, unanimously sot aside the conviction of Oscar Slater, who was liberated last November after serving 18£ years—a life sentence—for the murder of Miss Marion Gilchrist at Glasgow in 10OS. The Lord Justice General, Lord Clyde, said the Court was unable to hold that tho jury's verdict was unreasonable, »nd it did not think the new evidence of Dr. Adams and Police Marshal Pinkley had any material bearing. It could not be assumed without evidence that responsible officers of the Crown had concealed anything material from the defence.

The question of his abandoned character and the appellant's mode of life, however, raised a difficult problem. Cross-examination of the witnesses for the defence had shown that the appellant was living in a place where he pretended to practise dentistry. He resided with two women, one of whom was a prostitute. The Prosecutor, speaking to the jury at the original trial explained the brutality of the assault upon Miss Gilchrist by pointing out the depravity of the appellant who was living partly upon the proceeds of prostitution. On the vital point of the proof of identity this case presented an unusual difficulty. The jury might easily be influent .1 in one direction or the other, lienceuthe Court was of opinion that the clearest and most unambiguous instructions by the presiding judge were imperatively demanded to' prevent the jury from misunderstanding the opening passages of the speech of the prosecution. The judge's charge did not remove that erroneous impression. On the contrary it was calculated to confirm it. The jury were told that the presumption of innocence was less in its effect on the case of the appellant in the light of his ambiguous character than if his character were not open to suspicion. The presumption of innocence, declared the Court, applies to everyone charged with crime. Jt is fundamental to the whole system of criminal prosecution and the Court therefore considers that the judge's charge amounted to a misdirection in law. The conviction should therefore be set aside. A sensation was created at the hearing of the appeal, when Miss Helen Lambie, formerly maid to Miss Gilchrist, and who was the chief witness at the original trial, refused to come from America to give evidence. The first witness, the widow of the late Dr. Adams, who had been the first medical man to see Miss Gilchrist after the tragedy, but who was not called as a witness at the original trial, stated that her husband assured her that Miss Gilchrist was killed by blows from a chair, and not with Slater's hammer, as the Crown had alleged. An American detective named Pinkney stated that Slater was handcuffed to liim when the former was identified by Helen Lambie in an American prison, but this identification was valueless.