MAN’S LIFE AT STAKE

Putaruru Press, Volume XII, Issue 562, 8 March 1934, Page 1

MAN’S LIFE AT STAKE

FRIENDS GO TO PICTURES Just how much does a murder mean to the men of the north of Australia ? This was the question aroused recently at the Supreme Court at Darwin by one of the strangest bequests ever put to a Judge trying a man for h'is life. When Judge Wells decided to sit late to avoid locking up the jury, seven witnesses from an outback station, who see civilisation perhaps once in every three years, asked if they could be excused, as they wanted to go to the pictures. Judge Wells lifted his eyebrows, shrugged his shoulders, and agreed. While the witnesses were away he sentenced to death a man who had been their comrade for many years.

The case was one in which Ernest Moray Baker, part-owner of Bjnmarch station on the Barkly tableland, was found guilty of murder. The jury added a strong recommendation to mercy on the grounds that Baker’s ill-health, business worries and disappointment in a love affair all tended to unbalance his mind. Baker is the first white man sentenced to death in the North for 40 years.