NEWSPAPERS CITED

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXX, Issue 4874, 23 July 1936, Page 5

NEWSPAPERS CITED

COMMENTS CONSIDERED PREJUDICIAL. TO TRIAL OF McMAHON. (Press Association. —Copyright.) (Received 11.5 a.m.) London, July 22. Statements published in the Evening News and the Daily Express, arisings from the proceedings against George Andrew McMahon, who is charged with an attempt on the life of the King, was the subject of an application on the part of the Attor-ney-General for a rule nisi for a writ of attachment against the editors and publishers of the papers concerned, on the ground that the comments gravely prejudiced a fair trial of the accused.

The Bench, including the Chief Justice, granted ‘the application, the hearing being set down for July 27. The Attorney-General quoted passages from the Daily Express describing McMahon as “a man with grievances against authority,” and alleging that McMahon was kept under constant observation of the prison doctors and mental specialists, and declaring that “this was a case of a man who brooded over imaginary wrongs and allowed his instability of character to derange his native intelligence and boasted that his views were non-sectarian and non-political.’’ /The Daily Express also published statements of persons claiming acquaintance with McMahon. One of these statements was: “He has drinking bouts which were sending him crazy.” Other paragraphs of which the Attorney-General complained stated that McMahon was obsessed with the crazy idea that Sir John Simon and the Home Office were preventing the publication of the “Human Gazette.” The Attorney-General also cited alleged incidents in McMahon’s life published in the Evening News, declaring there were grave objections to biographies of this kind, and he objected to other passages “purporting to deal with the motives and mental state of accused.”