MAREO’S RELEASE?

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22582, 10 March 1948, Page 6

MAREO’S RELEASE?

OFFICIAL MOVE MURDER SENTENCE TWELVE YEARS SERVED (P.A.) AUCKLAND, March 10. A recommendation that Eric Mareo. aged 56, musician, who is at present serving a sentence of life imprisonment on a charge of murder, be released in May has been made by the Prisons Board to the Governor-General. Sir Bernard Frevberg, through the Minister of Justice, Mr. H. G. R. Mason. Mareo was found guilty on February 26, 1936, of murdering his wife Thelma Clarice Mareo and was sentenced to death, but a new trial was ordered and on June IT of the same year he was again convicted and the death sentence was again passed. This was commuted to life imprisonment by the Executive Council two months later and Mareo has been a ■'risoner since.

Several petitions praying that an inquiry be made into an alleged miscarriage of justice in his case were presented to Parliament on Mareo's behalf and an appeal against his conviction made to the Court of Appeal in 1946 was dismissed.

An official of the Prisons Department said a sentence of life imprisonment might be considered by the Prisons Board at anytime after a prisoner had served five years, depending upon the prisoner's age, his conduct and the circumstances surrounding his case. The board might recommend to His Excellency, through the Minister, that a prisoner be discharged after a given time or released on probation for a pre scribed period, It. was competent for the Minister of Justice to ignore the board's recommendation. but he rarely if ever did so.

The official estimated that there would be approximately 20 persons in the Dominion who had been released from prison after being sentenced to life imorisonment. Some others would have left the country or had died. It was difficu't to trace them after they had served their probationary’ period.