HANGING OPPOSED

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23047, 26 May 1938, Page 10

HANGING OPPOSED

SYDNEY MUSDEBER OUTBURST AT MEETING ——— ' A'if. FATHER OF THE VICTIM [from oub own correspondent] SYDNEY, May 20 A meeting held in Sydney to open a campaign to save a murderer from the gallows was dramatically interrupted by the father of the six-years-old girl who was the murderer's victim. Alfred Spicer, aged 65, was sentenced to death in March for the) murder of Marcia Hayes, whom he had suffocated. The Howard Prison Reform League sponsored the meeting as a protest against the decision to hang Spicer whose execution is set down for May 26—Ascension Day.

The girl's father, Mr. E. L. Hayes, a pastrycook of Windsor, -30 miles from Sydney, was in the back of the hall, and when the chairman of the meeting said: "We have one idea only to-night—-to prevent capital punishment and the hanging of Spicer," Mr. Haye« walked quickly to the platform. "What right have you to protest against the hanging of Alfred Spicer ? He murdered my little girl," Hayes shouted. The meeting was thrown into disorder and there were shouts of "Sit down," and "We hare every right." A police sergeant told Hayes to take a seat, but he walked from the hall greatly agitated. "I came all the wav , from Windsor to demonstrate against these people who do not want to see justice done," he said later. "They are inhuman. I am living in constant fear for my two other children." One man offered to hang Spicer free of charge-and save the Government the cost of paying the official hangman his fee of £5. He was Roy Helme, a returned soldier and the father of four young daughters. Deprecating "maudlin sympathy," he said he would hang Spicer "without a qualm." Spicer is resigned to his fate. He does not know of the move for his reprieve. He is one of the few prisoners in the history of Australian Courts who wanted to plead guilty to a capital charge. He persisted in his plea "of guilty against the advice of his counsel, to whom he kept remarking, "I have pleaded guilty, let it tgo at that." The hearing was adjourned for a week, and when Spicer again appeared he pleaded not guilty. In his statement from the dock, referring to the crime, he said. "For what I have done I am very sorry. I take 'turns' as the result of my war injuries. I am not then responsible for what I do. From the time I was a small child I had no mother or father and 'grew up in the gutter,' "