TERRIBLE DISCLOSURE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19986, 30 June 1928, Page 2 (Supplement)

TERRIBLE DISCLOSURE.

INNOCENT MAN EXECUTED.

A MURDER IN GERMANY, ' ARRESTS AND CONCESSIONS, Germany has been horrified by the disclosure of an amazing miscarriage of justice—the execution of an innocent man for a murder which others have now confessed. The victim of this appalling legal tragedy was a Russian farm labourer named Jakoclowski, who was executed in 1925 on a charge ol first hanging and then drowning his four-year-old illegitimate son.

The disclosure of the blunder is made by tho Mecklenburg-Strelitz Ministry of Justice, which makes tho terrible confession:—" We have no doubt that this unfortunate man was condemned to death and executed for a murder of which he was completely innocent." Jakodowski was a prisoner of war when lie went to Germany in 1916. After peace was signed ho remained at tho farm to

which he had been sent to work. At the trial the hapless man, who could speak very little German, was refused the services of an interpreter. It was suggested by the prosecution that he killed tho child to rid himself of what was to him simply an encumbrance. Jakodowski had always shown great kindness to tho child, but was the last person seen talking to him on tho afternoon of the murder. Up to the last ho stoutly protested his innocence of tho crime, but his plea was ignored, although the purely circumstantial evidence against him was decidecJJy incomplete and weaJc. The blunder has recently come to light as the result of the untiring efforts of opponents of capital punishment, who did not cease to investigate the accusations which the condemned man made against three of the four chief witnesses at tho trial.

These men have been arrested, and their alleged confessions have revealed the terrible truth. According to the statement of one of the men, the true motive of tho crime was the desire of the murderer to occupy the wretched attic in which the child slept. No fewer than iifteen people were living in two rooms- of the miserable cottage which was the child's home. The murder is alleged to have been committed by the child's two uncles, brothers of its dead mother.