HABEAS CORPUS WRIT

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 95, 16 January 1929, Page 13

HABEAS CORPUS WRIT

CASE OF SAMOAN CHIEF TAMASESE

GROUNDS OF APPLICATION Dominion Special Service. Auckland, January 15. A writ of habeas corpus has been issued by Mr. Hall Skelton, acting on behalf of Taniasese, the Samoan High Chief, who is undergoing a sentence of six months’ imprisonment in Mount Eden Gaol for failure to pay certain Samoan taxes. Taniasese was sentenced in December and deported to New Zealand to serve his sentence. The Registrar of the Supreme Court has forwarded the writ to Mr. Justice Herdman, at Rotorua. If a priina facie case is made put, the Judge will issue a rule nisi to the Superintendent of the Mount Eden Gaol to produce the body of Taniasese at a date therein fixed, when the case will be argued. The grounds of the writ are said to be as follow: “That an Order-in-Council of May, 1920, giving Legislative authority to New Zealand to legislate for Samoa, only gave power to the extent that His Majesty possessed: that constitutional authorities state that the King in Council cannot delegate any power to New Zealand to alter or amend any constitutional laws in force in the British Commonwealth of Nations, nor in protectorates, ceded territories, Crown colonies, or mandatories; that the King’s prerogative is completely hemmed in by the constitutional enactments Magna Charta Bill of Rights and habeas corpus; that the New Zealand Legislature, in attempting to repeal the Habeas Corpus Act by virtue of Section 210 of the Samoa Act, 1920, has usurped the power, which His Majesty, through his Order-in-Council, never gave it, and hence the section is ultra vires and Tamasese has been illegally deported and imprisoned' in Mount Eden Gaol; that even if Tamasese had been deported under, and by virtue of the Colonial Prisoners’ Removal Act, 1869, which in his case he has not, then the essential conditions of that Act do not apply to his case: viz., (1) that Samoa has no prison; (2) that the climatic conditions of Samoa render it imperative, having regard to his health and life, that he be removed to another colonial gaol.”