Murders Have Increased in N.Z. Since Death Penalty Was Abolished

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 22868, 11 February 1949, Page 3

Murders Have Increased in N.Z. Since Death Penalty Was Abolished

AUCKLAND, Feb. 10. Murders have substantially increased in New Zealand in the seven years 1942 to 1948 inclusive. In the seven years before the abolition of the death penalty in 1941 there were 54 cases of murder in New Zealand. In the seven years following 1941, the number of murders was 87, an increase of 33, or more than 61 per cent. There were nine murders in 1941, some before and some after the passing of the amending Act. In the following paragraph showing the incidence of murder in New Zealand for the seven years since the death penalty was abolished and tlie seven years before, figures quoted have been taken from the annual report of the Police Force. An exception is the 1948 figure, which is not yet available from official sources, and which has been calculated from files. Retails are:—

1948, 10; 1947, 12; 1946, 10: 1945, 20; 1944. 20; 1943, 10; 1942, 5; 1941, 9; 1940, 4; 1939, 4; 1938, 7; 1937, 4; 1936, 8; 1935, 11; 1934, 16. When the Crimes Amendment Bill was debated in the House of Representatives its provisions, which included abolition of flogging and whipping as punishments as well as abolition of the death penalty for murder, were vigorously protested against by the Opposition. Rcintroduction of Death Penally Reintroduction of the death penalty has been recommended several times since by grand juries and other authorities, and during the last session of Parliament, following a brutal murder in Wellington, the Opposition again sought the restoration of capital punishment. The Minister of Justice, Mr. H. G. R. Mason, said on that occasion that it would take more than the emotion aroused by one or two atrocious crimes to cause a reversal of Government policy. One of the worst tragedies in the history of the New Zealand police force occurred late in 1941, when a South Island farmer, Stanley Graham, shot dead four police officers and two Home Guardsmen. Following an extensive manhunt, Graham was shot by one of the searchers, and died later from his injuries.

Among more recent cases, there has been special public interest in three, all in the North Island. The battered and outraged body of Mrs. Catherine G. Cranston was found on Mount Victoria, Wellington, last September, and, in returning a verdict of guilty against the 20-year-old accused the jury added a rider that it viewed with great concern the possibility of his release at a comparatively early age. Last December, a former railway guard, Mr. H. W. Brunton, who was living alone in a hut at Wairoa, was brutally murdered, and so far there has been no arrest. Most recent is the murder at Whakatane last week of a young traffic inspector, Mr. John Kehoe, which was followed by the discovery, after a hunt of several days, of the body of a missing youth, Richard Angus McGill. He had earlier been under the notice of the police, and had been for a period under the -are of the Child Welfare Department.