LIFE SENTENCE APPEAL

Dominion, Volume 36, Issue 310, 25 September 1943, Page 9

LIFE SENTENCE APPEAL

Oriental Bay Fatality

A further appeal by. Leonard Neiling. brushmaker, who was sentenced by the Chief Justice, Sir Michael Myers, in the Supreme Court, Wellington, on May 10, 1941, to imprisonment for life for manslaughter in having caused the death ot Mrs. Marjorie Livingstone Horton on the beach at Oriental Bay in January of that year, came before the Court of Appeal on Thursday, when the Court reserved its decision as to whether prisoner was entitled to make a second appeal. The Court comprised Mr. J ustice Blair, Mr. Justice .Smith, Mr. Justice Johnston, and Mr. Justice Fair. Yesterday the caEe was argued on its merits. . Mr. W. E. Leicester, tor appellant, said prisoner was charged with murder, but the jury, after a trial which lasted four days, returned a verdict of manslaughter. The Chief Justice had sentenced prisoner to imprisonment for life. Counsel had advised prisoner to wait for two years before appealing, on the ground that prisoner had to expect a severe sentence, and it would be better to wait till the atmosphere of the case had cleared. . - . The present appeal, continued Mr. Leicester, was not merely against the excessive nature of the sentence, but ix*. this case a wrong standard of punishment was applied. It was common ground among the medical witnesses that Mrs. Horton suffered from hardening of the arteries; that she died as the result of a stroke, which could have caused her death at any time without injury; that she had a very fragile jaw-bone: that the whole arch of the jaw-b’one had collapsed as the result of a blow;, and that the cut over her eye was consistent with a fall. The Government had abolished capital punishment, and had ■ substituted hard labour for life. This man of 27 had received the same sentence as he would have received had he been found guilty of the charge upon which the jury had acquitted him. He and Mrs. Horton went in common agreement to have a drinking party on the beach at Qr:ental Bay. and considerable doubt existed as to the part played by prisoner in the injuries deceased had received. If a woman, 20 vears his senior, accosted a man, and allowed herself to be picked up in the street, it was not unreasonable to assume that she was not averse to sexual intercourse. The sentence of imprisonment for life, he contended, was not justified in this case. Case for the Crown. The Solicitor-General, Mr. H. H. Cornish, K.C., said there might be something in the argument that a man convicted of murder could get no more than a lite sentence, while this man who was found guilty of manslaughter received the maximum sentence. Whether or not the et J rn r ed judge applied the wrong standard, had to be determined by what the law was at the time. Prisoner was sentenced on Mav 15, 1941, and the law abolishing capital punishment did not come into force till September 17, 1941 He submitted that the evidence disclosed nothing less than a brutal rape, with every circumstance of indignity. . -*-he jury could have found prisoner guilty of murder, and had they done so their verdict could not have been questioned, iney took a merciful view on the ground that they were satisfied that he did not intend to kill the woman; but he was so indifferent that a verdict of murder would have been justified. No doubt the unfortunate woman got herself into the situation in which what happened took place. It must be conceded that this man did not track the woman down in cold blood. . ... The Court reserved its decision.