GREEN WOOD CASE

Hokitika Guardian, 8 January 1921, Page 4

GREEN WOOD CASE

- — WELSH SOLICITOR S ORDEAL. LEGAL METHODS. LONDON, Nov 15. Never since the notorious Mnybriek ease ,tried at Liverpool over thirty wears ago, has a “poison-ihurdcr ’ case attracted such general aiid absorbed attention as the tiia lot Air Harold Ctroth «ood a solicitor <>t Kidwelly, South Wales, which occupied the attention of 3ir Justice Sharman and a jury at the (armarthon Assize Court tor .seven days this and last week, and ended in .the acquittal of the accused. So intense was public interest in this case that special arrangements were Made by the Press Association I'of the most, rapid possible transmission oi the nows t 0 the press all over the Kingdom. The reporting the trial constitutes a record, if not in the actual number of words transmitted to the newspapers, at any rate in the method of transmission. With the aid of the telephone authorities the Press Association made arrangements to telephone from Carmarthen to London each day ot the trial a full report of the proceedings, and, as the staff of reporters engaged in this , work dictated their reports direct from ‘j their short-hand notes it was passible | for the agency to issue a continuously I running story of the trial. On many ! occasions evidence given in Court was j available in typewritten form in Elect ! Street within a few minutes of its having been given at Carmarthen, 250 miles away. During the seven days of j the trial the Press Association received over the telephone wires 74,271 words, I mi average of some 11,000 per day. | The public—a very large part of it at

■my rate is, of course, perpetually hungry for tales of Rind crime hut in this Greenwood ease the lurid element was entirely lacking, and save in the ■ theory of the prosecution that Greenwood murdered his wife under the impulse of desire for another woman, there was little appeal to sensation. What particularly focussed public attention on a somewhat dull and drab case is a matter for speculation, but it is just as well that Greenwood's trial oeurred during'what one may term a breathing space between very great events, namely, the coming of the Coal Peace and the homecoming of Britain’s Unknown Warrior, for the prominence given to the case by every newspaper published within the Kingdom drew the nation's attention most to an old-standing defect in our “circuit methods." Nothing could he more un-English than to keep n person confined to prison for over four months with a charge of murder hanging over his head. To any innocent prisoner if must mean mental torture, and to many men and women it would prove fatal to their mental stability, vastly injur ions to them physically, and to some the results might easily he fatal. If the attention drawn to his case brings about drastic amendments to a judicial system under which a person theoretically in law held to he innocent until a jury has found him guilty, to he kept in torture for months on end, Harold Greenwood will not have suffered in vain. The course of events in this much discussed ease may he briefly outlined. In the summer of last year the wife of Harold Greenwood, a solicitor of good position and reputation living in a little village of South Wnes, died suddenly. She had been an invalid for years, and her doctor without hesitation ascribed her death to heart disease. Four months later the widower again 1 married ,an action obviously calculated j to cause malicious gossip. A man must J liavo passed his life in very kindly soc- I

icty who has not known oases of bereavement and second marriage less open to criticism from the point of view of sentiment about which scandal gave tongue. Ten months after Airs Greenwood s death her body was exhumed, and analysis discovered arsenic in the viscera. Police inquiry was able to produce evidence of suspicions circmnsfonces in Mrs Greenwood’s last hours, and a coroner’s jury found that her husband bad murdered her by administering arsenic. That finding became of no ellect by the verdict returned at the Assizes, though the final decision j was in full accord with the evidence, it is clear that the elaliorate inquiry and the prosecution bv the Crown were justified ,though .when all the evidence is considered, the Crown case certainly lacked convincing force. 'Hie Times indeed indulges in a vicious attack on the Director of Public Prosecution arguing that “the evidence was so flimsy that it is a marvel that the Director had the temerity to put Mr Greenwood

in the dock, and the ease has proved the subordinates of that official to lie utterly incompetent.” It must, however, be borne in mind that twelve “good men and true” bad already found Greenwood guilty of murder, si, whatever the Director of Prosecutions and bis subordinates may have thought of the case against the accused, they had no option in the matter. To obtain a verdict of guilty, the ( rown bad, of course, first to prove that Mrs Greenwood died of arsenical poisoning, and, secondly, that Harold Greenwood administered the arsenic, l'or both suggestions there was evid-

oiH-o, but nobody can wonder that the jury found it either unsatisfactory or insufficient. They may well have approached the question with a doubt whether any criminal explanation was necessary to account for the death of a woman who had been loop; an invalid. Hut that arsenic was found in the body they were doubtless convinced, and they had the emphatic opinion of an expert of the highest authority, Dr Willcox, that in his opinion arsenical poisoning was the cause of death. .Juries are apt to be critical of expert evidence, and in this case the opinion was shown to depend upon arguments which laymen might dismiss as merely probable reasoning. Moreover, there was fairly good medical testimony to suggest that Mrs Greenwood died from a dose of morphia. Dr Griffiths, who had attended Mrs Greenwood for sixteen years, had signed a certificate that she died from heart disease, but on three occasions he swore that be had given his patient two morphia pills. At the trial he admitted that that was a mistake. He admitted that he hifcT confused morphia with opium in his evidence, and said finally, in cross-exami-nation, that if he had given morphia it would have caused death. He was tin-

able to produce his prescription hook, and his evidence was altogether most unsatisfactory. Another point in Greenwood’s favour Was that Dr Willeox himself admitted that “approximately the minimum fatal dose” was all he could suspect. This is drawing very near the line of hypothesis. Mr Justice Shearman, however, in summing-up, directed the in y that “the real difficulty in the case’' was to decide not whether there was a dnngeimis dost 1 nf arsenic in the hod.,', hut whether the prisonel' put it the e, and he pronounced the evidence on that point not wholly satisfactory. I hat Harold Greenwood had "had la go quantities of arsenic (in the shape of “weedkiller” containing GO per cent lead arsenate) in his'possession was not disputed. It is hardly disputable t’ at the evidence suggesting his administration nf it at the time when, il it was the VII (. of death, it must have been admini tered very weak. The pr locution by the testimony ot a parlourmaid, sought to trace the poison to the bottle of wine which Mrs Greenwood drank at lunch. But Miss Greenwood—and no doubt her evidence weighed heavily with the jury—swore, in direct contradiet ion to the parlourmaid, that she Mho drank from the bottle. There is also the ‘fact that the parlourmaid’s evidence was of its essence dubious. She swore that the bottle from which Mrs Greenwood was presumed hv the prosecution to have taken the fatal dose, was labelled •‘Port Wine.’’ Such a label was surely never placed on a bottle <>l l’ort emanating even Irom “a grocers license." Moreover, the evidence of Miss Greenwood, and all other evidence brought before the Court was to die effect that Mrs Greenwood's normal beverage was ‘'Burgundy.' ’and that “BuVgumlv” was her drink on the

fatal day. Both judge and jury evidently foumj it difficult to place my reliance on the parjoiirmaid’s evidence, and that difficulty was shared by tne general public*. So what remained ul the prosecution? Only the question ot motive, and by his wife’s death he stood not to gain, but to lose substantially. It was not disputed that by the dcnt.li of his wife he would lose her financial assistance to the extent of £fKK) a year. In the quest of another motive no suggestion could he made but that of sex infatuation, and ol that sex infatuation, and of that sexual entanglement which was discovered in the notorious Maybrick case of arsenical poisoning there was no evidence worth the name. Greenwood declared on oath that be had no affection for the women he married with what most people call unseemly haste, until after his wife died. The jury, said Air Justice Shearman, are better judges of facts of that description than lawyers, hut he went on to point out that no one suggested any improper intimacy. Counsel lor the Crown made comments not open to him under the law of evidence on the absence of the second Airs Greenwood from the witness box. If the prisoner and she were not oil terms of intimacy, lie asked, why was she not called 10 say so? These suggestions had to he withdrawn from the jury, and it is indeed most fortunate that no question of their influence* can arise. The position then, was that the evidence of fact failed entirely, and of evidence of compelling motive there was none. The jury, indeed, unless influenced by local prejudice, could only find a verdict, of “Not Guilty” and their verdict is admit tod by all who had followed the ease at all closely, to Is* the only one possible in the circumstances.