SMILING MURDERER

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22563, 6 May 1935, Page 26

SMILING MURDERER

MAN LAUGHS AT BLACK CAP One of the shortest murder trials on record took place at the Old Bailey, London, last month, when a few minutes after he had entered the dock and pleaded guilty, a*, man was sentenced to death. He laughed at the death sentence. The man was James Robert Vent, aged 37, an unemployed miner, who was charged with the murder of Clementine Balcnin, aged 49, at Camberwell, on January 12. Vent, who had had his shirt open at the neck, and tousled hair, came into the dock with an amused smile on his face, and when called upon to plead, he replied in a loud voice, " Guilty." Mr Justice Talbot, after conferring with the clerk of the court, asked Mr Anthony Hawke to see Vent and make sure he understood his plea. Vent, who had stood, hands in pockets, waiting unconcernedly with the warders, then went to the cells, where Mr Hawke saw him. On his return Mr Justice Talbot called Dr Grierson, medical officer of Brixton Prison, who had had Vent under observation. He expressed the view that Vent was sane. i

Vent was then called upon to plead, and again he answered " Guilty" in a loud voice. He" made no reply when asked if he had anything to say, and the black cap was at once placed on the judge's head. Vent smiled more broadly. " I am told," said Mr Justice Talbot, "by the doctor that you are capable of understanding what it means to plead guilty or not guilty. You have pleaded guilty to a charge of murder, and tfiere is only one sentence which the law allows. "You and others who hear me will understand this. When you go from here your condition of mind and every other fact in the case will be most carefully weighed, and it will be for those who have that responsibility to decide whether you are to suffer the sentence I am now about to pronounce upon you. T have no choice in the matter." Mr Justice Talbot then passed sentence of death. Vent listened intently, smiled again, and shrugged his shoulders. He chatted laughingly to the warders as he turned and left the dock. Usually judges refuse to accept a plea of guilty in murder charges and order the case to be tried. In 1925 Mr Justice Wright, at the Manchester Assizes, accepted the plea of guilty from a young man named Samuel Johnson, charged with the murder of a woman at Stretford, and the trial was over in very little more than four minutes. Johnson was hanged.

Another case after that occurred at the Old Bailey before Mr Justice Branson. ' A Homerton warehouse packer, James Frederick Stratton, who was accused of murdering his sweetheart in a railway train, persisted in his plea of guilty in spite of the judge's sending him back for a further consultation with his counsel, and the death sentence was passed in six minutes without any opening statement or eidence being tendered. This case was remarkable in that all the stages of the criminal proceedings up to the passing of sentence were completed within 17 days of the crime. Five minutes was the duration of the trial of Joseph Reginald Victor Clark, 21, a wireless operator, who pleaded guilty at the Liverpool Assizes to the murder of Mrs Alice Fontaine. He appealed on the ground that no evidence was given against him except his own confession, which he wished to withdraw. The appeal was dismissed, and a reprieve was refused.