The New Zealand Times. (PUBLISHED DAILY.) FRIDAY, JANUARY 17, 1879.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIV, Issue 5555, 17 January 1879, Page 2

The New Zealand Times. (PUBLISHED DAILY.) FRIDAY, JANUARY 17, 1879.

The case of Walsh, who was recently tried before Mr. Justice Williams and found guilty of murder, is attracting a good deal of attention in various parts of the colony; that is, if we may judge by the number of leading articles and paragraphs which have appeared on the subject. Not that there is anything peculiar in the case itself, which is simply one of brutal murder, followed by the arrest and subsequent condemnation of the criminal on the clearest possible evidence. What has especially attracted the attention of tho public and the Press is the action of the Government after the termination of the trial. Walsh, instead of undergoing the extreme penalty of the law, is to be imprisoned for life, and this departure from the ordinary course of procedure is what has been so freely commented on. Instances could, we believe, be adduced in the history of colonies with free representative institutions where the Governor has exercised the prerogative of mercy without consultation with his responsible advisers. Unless we are very much mistaken this was done by Sir James Ferqusson during the time he was Governor of this Colony. The occasion, however, was not one of life or death, but it seems clear that if the power can be exercised by the Governor in minor cases, it can be exercised by him in cases of the deepest importance. But no-doubt the ordinary practice is for her Majesty’s representative to be guided in such matters by his responsible advisers, and we have heard nothing which would lead us to suppose that a different course has been adopted in Walsh’s case. It may be taken for granted that the Ministry have been instrumental in getting his sentence commuted. The why and the wherefore of the interference is much more difficult to arrive at. The crime was a very barbarous one ; there did not appear to be any extenuating circumstances ; the evidence of the prisoner’s guilt was overwhelming; and the jury did not attach to their verdict a recommendation to mercy. Since the trial nothing has happened to throw a doubt on the prisoner’s guilt, and the Judge who tried Walsh, when asked, according to usual routine, to report on the case, gave it as his deliberate and solemn opinion that it was not one in which the ordinary course of the law should be interfered with. Generally speaking, great weight is properly attached to what the Judge says on that point. He is in a position to form a very trustworthy opinion with regard to the guilt or innocence of the prisoner, and he can also say whether the evidence went to show that the crime, though technically murder, was not of so heinous a character as to merit the last penalty of the law. In Walsh’s case it would seem that the Judge’s opinion has been thrown on one side as worthless. It is hard to believe that the Ministry have acted in this case in a purely arbitrary manner, and without some reason or reasons which have seemed to them sufficient to bar the execution of the sentence. We have no means of knowing what those reasons were, but rumor says that a doubt exists as to the prisoner’s sanity at the time he committed the offence. It would be interesting to ascertain how the Ministry became possessed of this idea, which seems to have totally escaped tho observation of the police, of the prison authorities, of the jury, and last but not least, of the Judge who tried the case. Supposing, however, that rumor has for once spoken the truth, and further, that the prisoner was actually insane at the time he killed his wife, the absurdity and tho gross injustice of the course recommended by the Ministry become at once evident. “ It would be wrong,” they say, “ to hang “ this man as a murderer, for he was in“sane when he killed his wife; we will “ therefore see that his sentence is com- “ muted to penal servitude for life.” This remarkable logic with which Ministers have been credited in various quarters does not appear to have given much satisfaction. It is thought that the reasons should have been strong indeed to have induced them to depart from the beaten track, and that if proofs were forthcoming as to the prisoner’s insanity when he killed his wife, he should have been sent to a lunatic asylum, and kept there until he either died or recovered his reason. If he was sane enough to undergo penal servitude for life, or for any less term, he was, as a matter of course, sane enough to be hung. We feel sure that our remarks on this case will not be misinterpreted. We do not desire to make it the occasion of an attack on the Ministry in general, or on any one of their number in particular ; but at the same time it is evident that the carrying out, or commuting, of death sentences should, as far as possible, be made to depend on certain fixed rules. It will not do to play fast and loose where human life is concerned. If Walsh was mad when he slew his wife, or if he is mad at the present time, he should be sent to a lunatic asylum; if he was sane he should unquestionably have been hung. We presume that he has now escaped that fate; but it will be seen by the following extract from the Timaru Herald that our contemporary does not regard the matter as by any means settled:—“ We observe that the Governor “ has not fyet accepted the advice of his “Ministers in this matter; and it is to “ be hoped, most earnestly, that he will “not do so. Surely so clear-headed a “lawyer as. the Attorney-General can “ never have been a party to reoommend- “ ing that a convict should be reprieved “ against the advice of tho Judge, and “condemned to imprisonment for life, “ for an act assumed to have been com- “ mitted in a fit of madness ! Such a “proceeding would be neither more nor “less than tampering with justice, and “ degrading the prerogative of mercy into “ a mere matter of irrational caprice.”