DEATH SENTENCE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 76, 30 March 1935, Page 13

DEATH SENTENCE.

POLICEMAN SHOT. MALICIOUS WOUNDING. NEW SOUTH WALES CASE. Sentence of death was passed by MrJustice Maxwell at the Central Criminal Court. Sydney. 011 James Lucas, 4(i. who was found guilty of having maliciously wounded Constable J. T. Arthurson, with intent to murder him, at Bargo on January (i. Accused appeared unable to speak when the jury announced its verdict. In passing sentence, the judge described the crime as "callous and coldblooded," and said that 110 other verdict could have been arrived at by any jury. The shooting occurred after Lucas and other men had been found leaving a shop, which they had robbed. Til a statement from the dock Lucas said he did not have a revolver 011 him at the time Constable Arthurson was shot. He said he went to Bargo on the invitation of a man named Eon Reid, who suggested the robbery. Accompanied by another man, Evans, he drove to Bargo in a stolen motor car, and they met Reid 011 arrival there. After the three had robbed the shop, and were packing up the goods in a chaff bag, the policeman and a civilian appeared on the scene, and told them to put up their hands.

Shooting Follows Robbeiy. Lucas said he heard a shot, and saw a man, whom he took to be Reid, run away. At this stage Lucas escaped and he had no idea then that the policeman had been shot. When he returned to the spot where he had left the car, lie saw Reid, groaning and bleeding from a bullet wound, which had passed through his arm into the ribs. The first that he knew of the policeman having been shot, Lucas said, was when he was picked up by tlie police at Warwick Farm railway gates. Had he been aware of this shooting, Lucas declared, he would not have returned to Sydney, preferring to hide and die in the bush rather than face the charge. The jury, within less than half an hour, was back in Court with a verdict of guilty. Lucas' fingers gripped the ledge of" the dock convulsively as the jury announced its finding. Dramatic Statement by Accused. "I have not been under any delusions as to the blackness of the Crown case, and for that reason I have consistently refused to make a statement," said Lucas, in a dramatic statement from the dock. He said a man named Ronald Breen had suggested that they break and enter a store at Bargo, and he had thought it a good suggestion. I am a crook, but I am not a fool. I did not shoot Constable Arthurson." Accused said that the matter of identification, as told by witnesses other than Arthurson and Cuskelly, was a true statement. They did identify him as having seen liini at tfie times and place* where they had said. Lucas stood tensely to attention judge passed sentence of death. The judge said that the constable had recovered almost by a miracle and the marked gallantry that lie had shown on Mi is night was not only a credit to himself but to the whole of the force. '.I his praise also applied to Mr. Cuskelly, who was with the constable when he sought to make the arrest.