JURYMEN ABUSED.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LI, Issue 6, 6 December 1930, Page 14

JURYMEN ABUSED.

VERDICT IN TARANAKI CASE. NEW PLYMOUTH, Dec. 4. Members of the jury that found Abraham Wally Salaman, herbalist, guilty of manslaughter, are asking themselves what protection they can secure against abuse that they are receiving from members of the community who are personally dissatisfied with the punishment (twelve months’ hard labour' meted out to Salaman by the law for his crime. Jury members have been accosted many times in public and subjected to heated criticism, and some members who are in business have been threatened by customers with discontinuance of their patronage. One member told an interviewer that at least a dozen people had declared that they would take their custom elsewhere in consequence of the man having served on the jury which found Salaman guilty. One man had loudly stated his extreme views in a juryman’s shoup. “I don’t think I’ll lose over it,” said this juryman, “but it is not a pleasant situation to be placed in, and there is a prospect of losing a small amount of business through having served on that jury. AVe made a strong recommendation to mercy after finding Salaman guilty, and our part should end there, although it seems strange that the recommendation was not mentioned in Court. Another juryman told a similar sto r y. “Quite a number of people have given us gentle hints that we will be made to suffer for the part we played in the case,” he said. “AVe have been charged with ‘not considering the good that Salaman has d,one.’ That had nothing to do with iis nor the case. One woman ‘told me off’ in public, and so conducted herself that had the police been present she might have been charged. I think it is about time some action was taken by somebody to see, that jurymen are freed from criticism of the manner in which they discharge their duties, and especially criticism in public that may prove detrimental to business.”