SOLDIER’S MANSLAUGHTER Judge Finds Army Partly To Blame

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32385, 26 August 1970, Page 13

SOLDIER’S MANSLAUGHTER Judge Finds Army Partly To Blame

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) SYDNEY, August 25. The Australian Army must share responsibility for the killing of a mother of three by a Vietnam veteran, a Supreme Court judge said in Sydney today.

Army training had taught George William Franklin, aged 23, to kill with his bare hands, Mr Justice Else Mitchell said when sentencing him for manslaughter in Sydney’s Central Criminal Court. He told Franklin, a member of the Australian Army’s Mo. 3 Special Air Services Squadron: "There seems little doubt that the Army, to which you are devoted, must take more than a small responsibility for the grievous wrong you did your victim. “Upon the evidence given, it seems not only that your term in Vietnam was partly responsible for you having succumbed quickly to violence, but that the way in

which you killed your victim, with your own hands, was one which you were encouraged to learn in the course of your training.” Franklin was convicted by a jury last week of the manslaughter of Mrs Vebeverley Alma Phillips, aged 30, a mother of three, in Lithgow, New South Wales. He had pleaded not guilty to t).e murder of Mrs Phillips on March 30. The Judge sentenced Franklin to 12 years gaol, with a non-parole period of three years. In the trial, the Crown alleged that Franklin strangled Mrs Phillips in her home while on leave from Vietnam.