A CAUSE FOR CRIME

Southland Times, Issue 19501, 16 March 1925, Page 10

A CAUSE FOR CRIME

DEATH SENTENCE QUASHED. Overcrowding as an incentive to crime was discussed recently in the Court of Criminal Appeal, London, when a man under sentence of death had his offence reduced from murder to manslaughter, and was ordered seven years’ penal servitude.

Mr. Douglas Jenkins, for the appellant, Howard Ball, sentenced at Warwick for the murder of a man named Rice by shooting him, drew attention to the appalling conditions in which Ball lived. With his wife and 10 children he occupied one room in a house at Coventry and seven slept in one bed.

He was subjected to great provocation, Rice having been paying attention to Mrs Ball. Ball shot him when he saw them in a field, Rice with his arm around Mrs Ball’s waist.

The Lord Chief Justice said this was a terrible case, which in any intelligent classification of cases would be put under the headings of “Jealousy and the Housing Problem.” It was quite evident when looking at certain passages in the otherwise satisfactory summing up that the contentions in relation to manslaughter were not only not put to the jury, but were pretty clearly withdrawn from them.

In these circumstances the Court was of opinion that the verdict of the jury should be set aside, and that there should be substituted for it a verdici; of manslaughter '.vith a sentence of seven years’ penal servitude.