THE DELAYS OF JUSTICE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23685, 17 December 1938, Page 9

THE DELAYS OF JUSTICE

The " long arm" of the law has made a notable stretch in the case of Alexander Bikoff, of Brestovitza, Bulgaria, who (says the Manchester Guardian) has been arrested for the murder of his father 24 years ago and now faces a death sentence. Even that, however, is not its record achievement. Ten years ago a man was convicted in the courts of Malta for a murder committed a quarter of a century earlier, while much more recently a man was charged at Sheffield for an alleged kidnapping 30 years before In the eighteenth century a man named Home was tried and executed for the murder of a child 35 years after the crime, and Sir Fitzjames Stephen found himself called upon in 1863 to act as counsel for the prosecution of a man charged with stealing a leaf from a parish register in 1803! By comparison with such cases the arrest and execution of Eugene Aram 14 years after the murder of Clark might almost be quoted as an instance of rapid retribution.