FIGHT FOR LIFE.

Gisborne Times, Volume LXVIII, Issue 10749, 21 November 1928, Page 5

FIGHT FOR LIFE.

CHINESE APPEALS AGAINST SENTENCE OF DEATH. DRAMATIC SPEECH OF THREE AND HALF HOURS. United Press Ashe, by El. TeJ Copjrrleht (Australian Press Abed.) LONDON, Nov. 10. Chung Yi Miao, who had beeh sentenced to death for murder, made a dramatic three and a-half hours’ speech in the Court of Criminal Appeal against the sentence after the calling of two new witnesses, who stated that they had seen an Oriental near the scene of the murder on June 19.

Addressing the court, Miao said it was a Chinese custom when a woman married that her property went to her husband while she lived, but reverted to her family on her death. Judgment will be delivered to-day.

Chung Yi Miao, a Chinese law student, was sentenced to death at Carlisle (for strangling his _ Chinese wife at Borrowdale during their honeymoon in tho lake district on June' 19. Chung Yi Miao heatedly protested his innocence after the sentence. but Dir Justice Humphreys intimated that he believed the verdict was right. Summing up, the judge said it was evident the murderer had staged tile affair. The clothes of the woman were torn, suggesting an outrage. hut there was no sign of a bruise on the body. He added that Miao was an extremely clever man, who always had a ready answer. The defence suggested that two Easterners, either Chinese or Japanese, had murdered the woman for the. jewels she carried, worth £30,006, .the wife being a daughter of a- Chinese millionaire. The Crown, however, shewed that Orientals'were not within three miles of the scene of xha murder.