MAREO SENTENCE

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 39, 16 February 1943, Page 4

MAREO SENTENCE

LETTER TO ALL M.P.'S

MR. DOIDGE TAKES A HAND

The earnest belief that for seven years an innocent man has suffered the tortures of wrongful imprisonment in Auckland gaol is expressed by Mr. P. W. Doidge, Nationalist M.P. for Tauranga, in a letter to the Minister of Justice, Mr. Mason, and all members of Parliament. In a letter of eight typed pages, Mr. Doidge makes a careful analysis of the evidence submitted to the jury at the second trial in 1936, at the end of which Eric Mareo, musician, was found guilty of murdering his wife at Auckland. Sentence of death was commuted to life imprisonment. Mr. Doidge says the case for the Crown against Mareo depended largely upon inference, plus the interpretations put on certain matters by medical witnesses and inferences drawn therefrom. The claim that these inferences and interpretations should never have been accepted, since in their medical aspects they were neither complete nor conclusive, was the subject of ; - a recent unsuccessful petition to"' Parliament. The late Sir. Wm. Wilcock, of London, world-famous toxicologist, having made a close study of the case, raised serious doubt as to the adequacy of the medical evidence on which the Crown relied. Sir Wm. Wilcock went further and gave it as his considered opinion that the evidence in the Mareo case proved conclusively that the veronal from which Thelma Mareo died was selfadministered. Question for Doctors The petition to Parliament asked that in the light of Sir Wm. Wilcock's report the whole case should be reviewed by a select committee of medical men, or that the Crown should extend its clemency to Mareo. Unfortunately this was not done, says Mr. Doidge. The select committee which considered the petition consisted of members of the House of Representatives. Fundamentally, the question was not whether a jury reached a proper conclusion on the evidence, but whether the medical evidence, on which the Crown relied for a conviction, was complete and conclusive. Only a select committee of competent medical experts could havq supplied the answer. There was not a single medical man on the select committee. Mr. Doidge points out that according to the British Medical Journal veronal occupies seventh or eighth place as a cause of suicide. There has never been a recorded case of murder by veronal. He also ; stresses the fact that the conclusion of an experienced criminal lawyer, Mr. Hemmerde, K.C., was that even if one accepted the medical evidence of the Crown in the Mareo case, the conviction was still extremely dangerous and should not be ■ allowed to stand. Moreover, Sir Wm. Wilcock was definitely, of the opinion that the veronal which killed Thelma Mareo was self-administered. Public Hysteria "Whilst engaged in journalism in London, I noted the public reaction during two famous murder trials— the Armstrong case and the Greenwood case" —says Mr. Doidge. "In each instance the husband was on trial for murder, charged with poisoning his wife. Public interest amounted almost to hysteria. Newspapers reporting the trials could not cope with the demand. Whilst the Mareo trial was in progress I noted in Auckland an atmosphere not unlike that in London. I respectfully submit that a grave mistake was made in not changing the venue of the second Mareo trial." Mr. Doidge says that, after the closest scrutiny of all the evidence, nowhere is there a scrap of positive evidence that Eric Mareo murdered his wife.