THE FREEMAN MURDER.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume I, Issue 163, 27 June 1911, Page 7

THE FREEMAN MURDER.

JELLICOE’S FUTILE APPEAL. [PER PRESS ASSOCIATION.] Wellington, June 26. Mr. Jellicoe to-day received the fidlowing letter fivin His Excellency the Governor, to which he forwarded the reply appended : — “23rd June, 1911. “Sir, —I beg to mform you that I have to-day received a telegram from His Majesty’s Secretary of State for the Colonies requesting me to inform you that His Majesty received your petition for the commutation of the death sentence passed on Tahi Kaka, and that His Majesty commands that you should be referred to my Government, to which has been delegated the prerogative of mercy. “I have the honour to be, “Sir, Your obedient servant, “ISLINGTON, Governor.”

(Reply.) “June 26th, 1911. “Sir, —I have the honour to acknowledge receipt of letter bearing to-day’s Wellington postmark, but dated by you from Government House, Wellington, on 23rd instant, wherein you inform me that you had that day received from the Secretary of State for the Colonies His Majesty’s commands that I should be referred to your Government if I desired to invoke, the prerogative of mercy for the Maori lad Tahi Kaka. I assume from this communication (1) that His Majesty could not have been aware, when he communicated his gracious commands to you, that your Government, on the very day it became known that I had cabled petitioning for a commutation of the death sentence, actually fixed the execution to take place at 8 o’clock on the following morning, or that, immediately the execution was so fixed, I informed you of the petition for a few hours to enable the King’s pleasure to be known, or that you ignored my request and despatched the boy, and never so much as acknowledged receipt of my communication; and (2) that His Majesty’s commands evidently contemplated that your Government. as delegates of the prerogative of mercy —sole arbiters of life and death—would afford me an opportunity of applying for the ex- ; ercise of that prerogative, and ; would consider any proper grounds ; I might desire to urge. How can * your Government now allow this to i be done, seeing that, with such very"* unseemly haste, the life of the boy * has been taken ; and what is the ' use, in the circumstances, of your ; to-day communicating to me His

Majesty’s commands? I have the honour to request that you will communicate this, my reply, to the Secretary of State for the Colonies for submission to His Majesty, in order that His Majesty may be made aware of'the treatment my petition has received and the manner in which his delegates of the prerogative of mercy exercise that prerogative in the case of a defenceless child of seventeen years of age, who was only one degree removed from a savage, and whom the jury, on evidence, had in fact recommended to mercy. “I have the honour to be, “Your obedient servant, “E. G. JELLICOE.”. Timaru, June 26. At the Unitarian service last night a resolution was carried unanimously protesting against the execution of Tahi Kaka. The minister, the Rev. Mr. Chapple, said capital punishment was no deterrent, and in this case allowance should have been nmae for inherited tendencies. The accused was a member of a race which was lately savage. The mover of the resolution dwelt on the latter point,- and said that the execution was more horrible than the murder.