STUART CASE

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28987, 31 August 1959, Page 11

STUART CASE

View Of Former Chief Justice

Rec. 11 p.m.) SYDNEY, Aug. 30.

■ The former Chief Justice of the Commonwealth High Court, Sir John Latham, has suggested to the South Australian Premier, Sir Thomas Playford, that the aboriginal, Rupert Max Stuart, who has been convicted of murder, should be given a new trial. Sir John Latham is president of the Australian Association for Cultural Freedom. Stuart was sentenced to die for the murder of a nine-year-old girl at Ceduna, South Australia, last year, but the execution has been postponed during the hearing of a Royal Commission into the case.

Sir John Latham suggested that the Royal Commission be directed to report whether Stuart’s conviction be set aside and a fresh trial granted by a judge and jury. “I suggest to you that difficulties might be largely removed if the Royal Commission was now directed to report whether, in view of evidence not tendered at the trial but which is now available, steps should be taken to set aside the conviction of Stuart and to provide for a new trial of Stuart by a judge and jury. “If this were done, it would at least dispose of the idea that the commission is itself trying Stuart without any jury,” he said.