SENTENCED FOR LIFE

Evening Star, Issue 19005, 29 July 1925, Page 5

SENTENCED FOR LIFE

IKE TORONTO MURDER DEATH PENALTY COMMUTED: Press Association—By Tele graph—Copyright SYDNEY, July 28. Cabinet lias commuted the sentence on Arthur Augustus Oakes to imprisonment for life. [in May last Oakes, who was already married, went through the form of marriage with a girl named Mona Beadier, aged twenty, who was found dead a few days later in a cottage at Toronto, near Newcastle. At the trial the Crown Prosecutor said that the accused had committed a cold, calculated, callous murder, probably without equal in the annals of crime in Australia. The evidence revealed a story of gross deception, and the Chief Justice in sentencing the accused to death said the way ho had hacked his unfortunate victim showed extraordinary brutality and incredible inhumanity. Mrs Oakes, in giving evidence, said that her husband had always boon good to her and the children, but he was childish and easily led.] LABOR GOVERNMENT AND DEATH PENALTY. For having murdered a young woman with whom ho had contracted a bigamous marriage, Arthur Augustus Oakes lias been sentenced to death in Bydney (states the ‘Australasian ’). The murder was most callous, and not one fact was adduced in Oakes’s favor. He aggravated his crime by trying to damage the woman’s character at the trial. The jury made no recommendation to, mercy. Oakes should pay the full penalty of the law. There are certain to bo busybodics who will try to obtain a commutation of the sentence. They will be encouraged by the existence of a Labor Government in Now South Wales. Though Labor, when last in office, did not repeal the law providing for capital punishment, the canons decided that the death penalty should not bo carried into effect. While the Fuller Ministry was in office several murderers were hanged, including William Gordon Simpson ami Ernest Williams, the musician who murdered his three children. Under New South Wales law—as in all of the States except Queensland —the trial judge is obliged to pass sentence of death if a prisoner is found guilty of murder. The right of the executive to determine whether the sentence should bo given effect to is held chiefly to permit of facts which had not been submitted at the trial being considered if they arose. It was never intended that the Executive should deliberately interfere with the course of justice. During the period that Labor was in office violent crime increased in Sydney. A criminal will hesitate if he knows that he will foi’feit his life for murder. He will risk imprisonment if he knows that his life is safe.