AN HEROIC LIE.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume VX, Issue 7102, 26 January 1901, Page 4

AN HEROIC LIE.

SEEVED LIFE SENTENCE FOR . A FRIEND'S CRIME. Twice condemned to death for a crime he did not commit, David Rutter has recently been released from prison after serving a term of twenty- seven years. In was in 1873 that he stood in the dock at Ipswich Assize Court with another man, charged with the murder of a game keeper on the estate of the Maharajah Duleep Singh. The whole burden of the guilt was assumed by Butter, who exonerated his companion from blame, and, on his own confession, was condemned to death. Many, however, believed in his inno- ] cence, and on the plea of a deformity on the neck, which would make hanging a horrible torture, a respite was obtained. Medical examination failed to confirm the theory, and he was again ordered for execution. Petitions still poured in, however, and at last his sentence was commuted to penal servitude for life. Now, on his release, an old man, he tells a sensational story. It was the other man who shot the gamekeeper, battered his head in, and threw him into a pond. But there was a woman whose heart would have been broken, and whose children would have been left fatherless; while Rutter was alone hi the world. So he took the whole guilt upon himself, and has just crept out from beneath the burden of it — endured for twentyseven years.