MANSLAUGHTER!

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 144, 20 June 1934, Page 11

MANSLAUGHTER!

GLEN INNES TRAGEDY. PITIFUL AND SORDID STORY. MENTALITY OF THE PARTIES. (From Our Own Correspondent.) -X i SYDNEY, June 14. After a prolonged investigation the trial of Ernest Edwards on a charge of murdering his brother-in-law, William McOrmish, near Glen Innes, has been concluded, the jury bringing in a verdict of manslaughter, adding a strong recommendation to mercy oil the ground of "the mentality of all parties concerned" and the conditions under which they lived. The .circumstances of this pitiful tragedy are sordid in the extreme. Edwards is of mixed race, his mother being a half-caste aboriginal and his father a half-caste Chinese. He has nine children, all dependent on him, and their mental condition may be judged from the fact that one of them, a youth of 19, being called as a witness in this case, seemed to have no clear idea of the question's put to him, and admitted that ho cannot even tell the time by the clock. McOrmish lived with or near the Edwards family, in a "camp" under the miserable and. deplorable conditions that are seemingly inevitable in this upcountry settlement of the unemployed in this State. Apparently,■ when McOrmish was injured,- the. .parties concerned were the worse for liquor, and Edwards told the Court that he himself U "quarrelsome when in drink." But the task for judge and jury was rendered far more difficult than it need have been bv the unfortunate lapse of time since tiie death of McOrmish and the character of the evidence put before them. The body had not been exhumed till six months after death; and the views of the medical men to whom it was then submitted conflicted strongly, with the death certificate and the opinion of the doctor who had signed it. "Heaven Help the Patient." The Crown Prosecutor evidently had a very poor opinion of Dr. Lynch, who bad attended McOrmish, remarking that if this .was a sample of the treatment, available at Glen Innes Hospital, "heaven help the patients!" The medical certificate attributing death to cerebral hemorrhage, following naturally on diabetes, was finally rejected, and the opinion of the other doctors, that McOrmish had been killed by a heavy blow delivered with some "blunt instrument," was adopted. But how was the injury inflicted? On this point the evidence; was simply bewildering. Edwards liim'self- had given three different versions of the tragedy, and he could only account for the statements made by the Crown witnesses 'by asserting that, as his lawyer put-it,, "four of, f them without purpose or gain had conspired against an innocent man." On the other hand, the stories told by the Crown witnesses did not hang together. and the Court had good reason to suspect that, perjury was committed. One of, the witnesses testified that she had seen Edwards chasing. McOrmish through a paddock, on the night of the

tragedy. But that night was dark and misty, and this woman in Court, when asked to test her sight by looking at the clock, could not see to tell the time, and believed that she saw a woman in the Court gallery, which was filled entirely with men. "A Most Depressing Business." The jury seem to have given up in despair the hopeless task of reconciling all these stories. But there was good reason to believe that McOrmish met his death as the result of a drunken brawl, and that Edwards was directly responsible for his tragic end. They therefore watered the verdict down from murder to manslaughter; and the judge, in pronouncing sentence of three years' imprisonment, pointed out that in imposing the lightest penalty allowed by the law, he was taking into consideration not only the circumstances emphasisted by the jury, but the hardships to which the wretched family would be subjected through losing their chief means of support and protection. It was altogether a most depressing business, and those who believe either that environment plays a large part in the preparation of crime, or that the offspring of half-castcs are usually degenerate, might profitably study the records of the case.