“MURDER IS MURDER”

New Zealand Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 11251, 1 July 1922, Page 11

“MURDER IS MURDER”

UNWRITTEN LAW WARNING. Tho leniency shown in the United States towards women who commit ahat is elsewhere regarded as murder has aroused a novel protest from Judge Ross Avery, of the Superior Court at Los Angeles. Judge Avery released on her own recognisances to be of good behaviour for nine years Airs Julia Johnstone, whom he had tried for tho murder of her husband. Tho jury convicted her of manslaughter only, after she had explained that she snot her husband because ho had refused, even for the sake of their little daughter, to abandon hia business' as “bootlegger”, (liquor smuggler), and adopt a legitimate occupation. Judge Avery then released the woman on probation with the folliwing warning: “This! court does not approve of wives shooting their husbands or husbands shooting their wives, and if anyone thinks he or she is going to receive leniency, if he or she goes out and shoots his or her spouse, he or she is wrong. I want it to be distinctly understood that murder is murder, no matter who does it, and that the mercy extended to this woman will be just as quickly withheld from tho next defendant.”