NICHOLAS MOROS IN DEFENCE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVII, Issue 8361, 15 September 1890, Page 3

NICHOLAS MOROS IN DEFENCE.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, am a Greek, and may be excused for imperfectly understanding English customs, manners, and English law. Before I came to this colony I was in Cardiff, where I was an eye-witness to a row between the captain of a vessel and one of his crew. The man drew his knife, and would have murdered the master, but I threw myself upon him, and although I saved the master's life, I had the misfortune to receive a gash in my thigh from the fellow's knife which laid me up in the Cardiff hospital for six months. When I was told that Funcke had murdered constable McLeod, and was armed with a revolver, I took a gun and brought him down, although he would have murdered me with his revolver if I had given him time. Wow the Judge cautious me, and says I might have been hanged. The Coroner's jury, who found Funcke guilty of murder, complimented me for my act. A Dargaville jury is not bloodthirsty, but Judge Conolly says Funcke was an unarmed man, and I might have been hanged for shooting him. Is not a revolver having three chambers loaded with ball, in the possession of a man who lias previously fired three times with effect on a passenger steamer, and killing one of the passengers, sufficient justification for what I did? When my children grow up, are they to remember that your Judge told me I might have committed murder, and should probably be hanged fordoing what the Judge himself and many more would have been afraid to do ? If this is a specimen of your British law and British justice, I can say things are managed much better in Greece, where I came from. Should I ever see another row, I shall fly away and lock mysel in a room, if this is how I am to be treatei in your boasted Courts of Justice.—l am &c., Nicholas Moros.