SENTENCED TO DEATH

Evening Star, Issue 20486, 17 May 1930, Page 2

SENTENCED TO DEATH

CONVICTION QUASHED FATAL FLAW AT TRIAL privy council and doctor. What was regarded as a ‘‘ fata] flaw” in the conduct of a trial , in West Africa was detailed in the report of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council on the granting of the appeal of Dr Benjamin Knowles, a Government medical officer, of Bekwai, Ashanti, against his conviction on a charge of murdering his wife, formerly known in the music hall profession as Madge Clifton. ; Dr Knowles, a native of Aberdeen, was convicted at Kuniasi, Ashanti, by a judge sitting without a jury and sentenced to death, which sentence t waa afterwards commuted by the Governor of the Gold Coast. The alleged murder occurred after a luncheon party at the Knowles’ bungalow, at which several _ Government officials were present,' in October, 1928. Dr Knowles and his wife were in their 'bedroom when the latter was shot with a revolver. She died in hospital two days later, and in her dying deposition she declared the wound to have been inflicted by herself accidentally. The case fpr the prosecution was that the deposition was false, and was a “sporting effort” on the part of the wife to shield her husband. The appeal to the Privy Council was on the ground that there was no jurisdiction in the court to try the doctor without a jury; that there was no reliable evidence on which a capital conviction ' could safely and justly be based, and that the case should have been referred to the Supreme Court of the Gold Coast and tried with a jury. REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE. . Viscount Dunedin delivered the report of the committee, the Lord Chancellor (Lord Sankey) and Lords Darling, Atkin, and Tankerton concurring. Dealing with the facts of the case, the committee pointed out that appellant and his wife wore alone in their bedroom after luncheon. There had been guests, and they had gone away shortly after 2 p.m. without anything noticeable having happened. Their native servants heard loud voices suggestive of quarrelling. Dr Knowles and his wife, it was proved, lived generally on good, and, indeed, affectionate terms, but had occasional quarrels which were greatly induced by the fact that both appellant and his wife were addicted to the taking of too much liquor, and appellant drugs, and were often in a drunken or semi-drunkeri and dazed condition. The evidence as to the time was confused and contradictory, but some- ■ where between 4 and 5 o’clock the native servants heard a shot and a Cry. They were frightened, and one of them ran off to the District Commissioner, who had been one .of the guests at the luncheon, and said what ho had heard. The District Commissfoner took his car and went off to the house of Dr Knowles, whom he saw, and asked if there had been an accident. Dr Knowles said it was all right. The .District Commissioner then went away.. AN IMPORTANT OVERSIGHT. The trial judge was entitled to draw his own conclusions as to whether Mrs Knowles’s confession was true, and the committee, not being an ordinary court of appeal, would not consider itself entitled to set that aside upon the ground that ’ it would come to a different conclusion on the facts as found. /

Having come to the conclusion that the story of an accident could not be substantiated, and the position and direction of the wound excluding all idea of . deliberate self-infliction, the judge was ‘driven to the conclusion that the shot was fired by appellant. That there was criminality m what happened was a necessary result oi that conclusion. In a fit of drim ten recklessness to fire a shot to silence a nagging woman, which shot the woman, even though the shot was not intended to hit her, was a crime. But the fatal flaw in the judgment was that having set aside Mrs Knowles’s account of the occurrence as an accident, the judge at once assumed that the only alternative to accident was murder. There was not the slightest inquiry into whether, assuming that the shot was fired by accused, the act amounted to manslaughter and not murder. There was no attempt to face the question of whether the standard of proof required to prove, murder as against manslaughter had in this case been reached. QUASHING OP THE CONVICTION. If the case had been : before a jury said the committee, and the judge had not explained to them the possibility of a verdict of manslaughter, but had said if not accident, the only alternative was murder, that would have been an erroneous slimming up. That was what was to be found in the judgment. Tho question as between manslaughter and murder was entirely undealt with, and the committee was therefore, as the judge failed to consider the question, bound to consider whether the evidence here reached the standard of proof necessary to involve a conviction for murder. The committee 'was clearly of the opinion that it did not. A conviction for, manslaughter might have been a different matter, but that was not before it. It had, 'therefore, advised the Crown to quash the conviction.