THE RIGHT OF APPEAL

Otago Witness, Issue 3396, 16 April 1919, Page 16

THE RIGHT OF APPEAL

:—. -«•» ALICE PARKINSON'S SENTENCE.

(Fbom Or/B Own Corbespondsnt.) WELLINGTON, April 7. s Another appeal was made to-day to the' Minister of Justice for the release of the woman Alice Parkinson, convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to imprisonment i for life at Napier in June, 1915. , She is at present in Addington Gaol. Since her committal to prison there have been frequent appeals for her release. Mr Wilford was just as uncompromising in his refusal to set aside the decision of the judge of the court as his predecessor m offieß had always been. Mr Wilford enunciated the axiom that offenders against the law in any ordered society must pay the penalty of disobedience. Repentance was not the punishment, nor was forgiveness the reward of repentance: He did not consider that the members of the deputation or any other section of the public could properly decide whether the prisoner has been sufficiently punished. Alice Parkinson had been tried in a court of law before a judge of wide experience, and it seemed to him (the Minister) that for a Minister of Justice in such a case to review the sentence imposed would be wrong and unjustifiable. At the same time, he deplored the fact that there was no law on the Statute Book which granted to a convicted person a right of appeal on the facts. "It is," he said, "a travesty on justice that the question of a change of venue in a civil case may be taken even to tho Privy Council, while a man or woman tried for murder and sentenced to imprisonment has no right of appeal, even for mitigation of the sentence. In my Crimes Amendment Bill of last year, which passed the House of Representatives without a division, the people's representatives affirmed the principle that a convicted person, even though ho or she had pleaded guilty—whioa was not the case with Alice Parkinsonhad a right to appeal to the Court Appeal, which court couldj inter alia, quash or reduce tho sentence imposed. This Bill was lost in the Legislative Council. Had it been tho law of the land to-day Alice Parkinson could have had a review of her sentence bv a bench cf judges in our courts of law. That, in my opinion, is where the review Should take place—not in the office of the Minister of Justice. I hope that shortly my Bill will be part of the statute law of the land, and then Alice Parkinson, or any other person convicted of a crime, 'will have the right to have" her sentence reviewed, and, if the Court of Appeal reduced or quashed."