IMPRISONMENT FOR LIFE.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18014, 5 March 1924, Page 8

IMPRISONMENT FOR LIFE.

HIGGINS'S SENTENCE

COMMUTED.

(TRSSS ASSOaJkTIOK TELSGBAV.;

WELLINGTON, March 4. This morning's meeting of the Executive Council, over which the Gov-ernor-Geijeral presided, decided to commute the death penalty imposed on John Christopher Higgins for the Waikino school murders to imprisonment for life.

The ground for the decision was that it was considered that Higgi ns was, from the medical point of insane when lie committed the murders. After the Executive had met, tho Minister of Justice said that all the doctors were agreed that Higgle was suffering from crronic delusional insanity, tho only difference being that the alienists called by the Crown at the trial were of the opinion that the insanity had not gone so far as to prevent Higgins f\'om knowing the nature and quality of his act. It will be a matter for consideration by the authorities as to whether Higgins will bo confined in a prison or in a mental hospital. In coming to its decision, the Executive gave consideration to the important report made in November, 1923, by the Committee set up hy the Lord Chancellor to report on the question of insanity and crime. In considering tho difference between what might be called legal and mental insanity, the Executive paid particular attention to the following finding of the English Committed: "It should be recognised that a person charged criminally with an offence is irresponsible for his act when that act is committed under an impulse which the prisoner was, by mental disease stance, deprived of any power to resist." In dealing with the powers of the Home Secretary to exercise the prerogative of mercy in murder cases, the English Committee pointed out that legislation might fie required in Great Britain to bring the rule it suggested into effect. New Zealand has always followed the English practice in offences involving the capital penalty, but in the case of Higgins, the Executive has taken info account the rule laid down by the English Committee which, in effect, means that if a murder is committed under an uncontrollable impulse which the murderer cannot resist owing to mental diisease, that' person is not responsible for the crime and can escape being hanged.