What Is Murder?

NZ Truth, Issue 1175, 7 June 1928, Page 6

What Is Murder?

MO one, but conscienceless ghouls and demoniacal sensationseekers, would wish to see a man hanged for no other reason than to "know what it looked like." But the thing that vexes the lay mind m regard to crime to-day is the appalling and disconcerting inconsistency m the matter of punishment for the greatest crime capable of being committed, namely, murder.

And the Executive Council's decision to spare Alari George Norgrove, who brutally battered his sister-in-law to death with so hideous and fearful a weapon as a flat-iron, is about as priceless a piece of inconsiderate, unjust and calculated rashness as was ever associated with crime or justice m this country. De Quincey burlesqued "murder as one of the fine arts," but with grim and frightful seriousness, young Norgrove, whose only strength and whose only weakness was an ungovernable temper, could qualify for this sinister artistry "with honors." In the face of established law, procedure, precedent and the wholesome protection of society, where is the line of demarcation to be drawn between studied and impulsive murder 1 I What is murder and who should expect to live after committing such a diabolical deed? But about this remarkable reprieve there must obviously have been a tremendous blunder somewhere.

If the savage and revolting attack on the unfortunate woman was the cold, calm and premeditated murder which the jury considered "after hearing all the evidence/ what Government — except m a vote-catching election year — would stoop to break the first principle of accepted legal ideals m crime punishment. On the other hand, if young Norgrove was thought to be insane by the Government, they have no color of right whatever to keep him m gaol. He should be put m an asylum until that wretched, ungovernable passion, mistermed m this case "insanity/* passes. Such extraordinary reasons as voiced by Coates (of course, acting on the statements prepared for him by his departmental advisers) leave one with a stirring sense of uneasiness. To "consider the "mental experts'" theory for instance, that ""though he (Norgrove) knew what he was doing when he picked up the flat iron, he may not have known when it came to using it," is to aim a blow at our mass understanding, which does not have to be high to see even through a layman's eyes an act of unconjtrollable temper, unbridled pasjsion and ungovernable impulse.

Never before has the law looked at this as an " excuse" for murder and never has , the door of hope bpen thrown wider open to those whose bad tempers and unharnessed impulses move them, to acts of the foulest violence.

The Executive Council's dictum, based on its weird and absolutely inexplicable decision, must surely m future be : ' ' Don't commit murder, but if you happen to forget and want to kill someone, do it m election year."

In the face of the Norgrove reprieve, no one should ever hang m this country for the crime of mur(ler.