TRIAL OF MANUEL

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28599, 30 May 1958, Page 6

TRIAL OF MANUEL

Summing-Up Begun (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) GLASGOW, May 28. Lord Cameron, the Judge in the trial for murder of Peter Anthony Manuel, began his summing-up a dramatic warning to the jury tonight, the ‘‘Daily Sketch” has reported. The newspaper said that Lord Cameron had said: “Innocent blood has been shed and young lives have been cut short in conditions of tragedy and horror. But neither you nor I are here as avengers of blood. . . . Your judgment must not be clouded by any feeling of revulsioii.” Lord Cameron gave the jury of six women and nine men two main points to consider. He told them they could not consider a plea of insanity because such a plea had not been made, though they might consider the catalogue of crime so formidable that only a madman could have done it. But under Scottish law mental disease in the accused might reduce murder to culpable homicide. The Judge told the jury that Manuel, who had dismissed his lawyers, had conducted his own defence with remarkable skill. But because Ke had no lawyer he was entitled to have all the evidence considered with particular care. A crucial matter was whether the statements and confessions he was said to have made to the police were made voluntarily or not. •Manuel had alleged what amounted to a “devilish conspiracy” by three senior police officers to bring an innocent man into the dock. If this were true, they should be in the dock for conspiracy to murder Manuel, and the jury should wipe the statements out jof their consideration. But if the jury decided they were voluntary statements and were true “then they may lighten your task in reaching a conclusion.” Before the Judge’s summing up Manuel had made his final address to the jury. He said his defence was that he was not guilty, and he had not killed any of the people with whose murders he had been charged. Dealing with the triple murder of the Watt family, he said: “There is absolutely no reason why I should walk into a house and just shoot three people. There is no motive, no question of theft. I did not know these, people, I never heard of them.”