IMPRISONMENT FOR LIFE

Otago Witness, Issue 2983, 17 May 1911, Page 30

IMPRISONMENT FOR LIFE

YOUTHFUL MURDERERS. SYDNEY, May 10. The death sentences passed on Millar and Clare have been commuted to imprisonment for life. The 'trial of the* youths William Francis Millar and Reginald Clare, each 17 years of age, on a charge of having at Billenbah Station, near Whitton, feloniously and maliciously murdered Sarah Warby on January 28, was concluded on April 6, at the Hay Circuit Court, before Mr Justice Gordon and a jury. The case for the Crown was that Mil Inland Clare were employed at Billenbah. Millar was engaged principally in rabbiting, and Clare principally in work about the homestead. On the day of the occurrence the youths, Mrs Warby, her daughter, and an employee named John Dunn had been together at the homestead. Dunn left to plough, and an hour or so later Clare came running to him, and told him a story of the shooting of Mrs Warby and her daughter. When the sub-inspector of police arrived with the ■ doctor from. Narrandra they found the body of Sarah Warby in circumstances which the Crown claimed was murder by the two youths acting in concert.

Tho evidence was practically the same as when .the youths were before the police court. Both Millar and Clare were in the box, and their statements as to who did the shooting were flatly contradictory. Mr M'Manamey, the Crown prosecutor, asked the jury to take the view that the murder was committed by one of the two accused, and that Millar was the one that fired the shot®, but he also asked the jury to convict Clare, on the ground that he was an accessory. This was shown by his giving no warning, and doing nothing, to protect Mrs Warby and her daughter. . Mr Justice Gordon said that, according to Millar's testimony, Clare had 25 cartridges, and that was the number which was handed by him to the police. The nfle which Clare was supposed to have used was found to be clean. Assuming that the jury found that Millar fired tho shots, they would have to consider to what extent Clare had consented to the deed being committed. Apparently there was no motive for this cruel and brutal murder. Evidently one or the other of the boys had been reading literature of a. sensational kind, harmful to young people. - The jury, after a quarter of an hour s retirement, returned with the verdict of guilty. Millar and Clare heard their'sentence of death unmoved.