JURY BIGHT HAVE BROUGHT VERDICT OF MURDER, SAYS JUDGE

Manawatu Times, Volume LIII, Issue 6757, 9 November 1928, Page 8

JURY BIGHT HAVE BROUGHT VERDICT OF MURDER, SAYS JUDGE

Hardie Gets Life PRISONER DOES NOT BETRAY ANY EMOTION BAD RECORD CAPPED. Per Press Association. DUNEDIN, Nov. 8. In sentencing William John Hardie to imprisonment for life with hard labour for the manslaughter of Joe Shum at Kyeburn, Mr Justice McGregor said that on the evidence the jury might have convicted the prisoner of murder. He could find no extenuating circumstances to warrant passing less than a life sentence. It was quite plain that he killed the unfortunate victim in very brutal circumstances. He was a young man of 22 years who had been in and out of industrial schools from an early age. He seemed to have been incorrigible and dishonest. He had been convicted of forgery, uttering and theft. Mr: A. C. HanlonJ the_ prisoner ’s counsel, had previously intimated the .abandonment of his intention to get the judge to state a ease for the Appeal Court with regard to the advisability of the dying declaration of the Chinese. Mr. P. B. Adams, the Crown Prosecutor, stated that the files showed the prisoner seemed to be abnormal, but he would not suggest that it was insanity from which Hardie suffered. Other people and the speaker had little doubt that he had been the cause of the crime. • • , In ’concluding, His Honour remarked that if, as suggested by counsel, prisoner showed signs of reformation, no doubt it would be open to the Prison' Board to take what steps it considered advisable in the way of releasing him, or otherwise. Hardie showed no emotion as he was led away.