HOW BUTLER WAS PUT IN FUNDS.

Dunstan Times, Issue 1819, 18 June 1897, Page 3

HOW BUTLER WAS PUT IN FUNDS.

When a terrible crime such as murder is perpstrated, the community has (says the Melbourne 'Argus') a sound claim to know everything about the occurrence. Has that claim been in any way encroached upon by the recent proceedings taken by the legal adviser of the man Butler against the Sydney daily newspapers? The public, the press, and prisoner are all interested in this question. Butler's affidavit is a peculiar one. It sets forth that inquests have been held on the bodies of Arthur Preston and Lee Weller; that verdicts of wilful murder were returned against one Harwood alias Butler ; that under these warrants he was arrested on 2nd February last; and that the " remarks, statements, and pictorial illustrations" contained in the Sydney papers of the 28th April were .calculated to prejudice his trial. Butler arrived in custody at Sydney on April 27, and he was accompanied from Auckland by reporters and artists, who professed to have heard his tale and to have limued his features. Immediately on arrival the reporters handed in their manuscript, and it was all set up and ready for the press, when, near midnight, an intimation was received that a sitting in camera had been held in the gaol, and that Butler had been committed for trial, his status thus being changed from a private though suspected person to a prisoner whose case was sub udice. It is frankly admitted by one and all of the newspapers that they did not pay sufficient attention to this circumstance. They were taken by surprise, and the narratives apparently were not re-edited. There is no doubt that all of the accounts were written on the supposition of Butler's guilt. As they appeared, they prejudged, so to speak, the case of a prisoner awaiting trial, and as the papers in turn conceded this much, the Court had no option but to impose a fine and to order costs, which, it was pointed out, would go to Butler's legal advisers. The Chief Justice was handsome in his remarks that he was confident the idea of interfering with the course of justice was never entertained by the Sydney newspapers, and in inflicting a fine he declined to mention imprisonment as a consequence of non-payment, and so to a large extent the defendants were adjudged guilty of an unintentional offence. Apparently there would have been no "contempt of court" but for the unusual course taken by the authorities of a hasty and secret committal for trial in the gaol. Thus our contemporaries are, as the judge appeared to feel, as much sinned against as sinning. The portion of their publications which under any circumstances it would be most difficult to extenuate is undoubtedly the illustrations. Hero—from the artistic standpoint—sympathy goes from the start with Butler,