THE PUHIPUHI MURDER.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXIX, Issue 98, 15 June 1911, Page 5

THE PUHIPUHI MURDER.

PETITION FOR CLEMENCY. TAHI KARA IN IGNORANCE. (IVv Press Association.) Auckland, Last Night. So far there has been no announcement of the Governor’s pleasure respecting the fulfilment or otherwise of the deatli sentence on the Maori >oy, Tahi Kaka, has been’ received iy the sheriff. The petition for reprieve is to-day in active circulation. The petition prays that the Governor will commute the death sentence on the grounds: (1) The extreme youth of the condemned boy ; (2) the disadvantages of his career from the absence of scholastic and spiritual teaching; (3) that the jury found during the trial sufficient grounds to urge a strong recommendation to mercy; (4) that the commutation of the death sentence would fittingly mark in our dominion that clemency which is not unusually associated with the coronation of our Sovereign Lord the King; (5) that the execution of the _ death sentence would prove exceptionally harsh since the condemned boy has been induced to join in the almost universal belief in Auckland that his life would bo spared; that, but for the condemned boy’s admission, the death of John Freeman would perhaps for all time have remained a mystery; (J) that, in several cases Lho Royal prerogative of mercy has 'icon recently exercised in the dominion in connection with a charge of murder.

The position is. naturally a general topic of conversation in Auckland, and the clement of suspense is a subject for common talk. Meantime, the person most keenly concerned in tJ.io decision remains in ignorance of the efforts to obtain a commutation of the sentence, and suffers the suspense of awaiting the oxatiou of the penalty.

LITTLE HOPE OF REPRIEVE

Auckland, Last Night. The Hon. dames Carroll, ActingPrime Minister, states in regard to the decision of the executive against reprieve!ng the Maori lad Tahi Kaka, now awaiting execution for the murder of an elderly gumdigger in the north of Auckland, that the matter was considered very carefully. The evidence was fully before them, and it allowed no conclusion hut that the murder was premeditated and deliberately carried out. There was no redeeming feature about the act itself, and the only ground of the jury’s recommendation to mercy was the prisoner’s youth. There had boon no provocation by the victim which might have worked ;inon the prisoner’s mind. If special leniency was shown in tho case it might have a had effect, upon the rising Maori generation. Everyone would shrink from confirming a sentence involving a human being’s death, 'hut so long as capital punishment prevailed its application must ho recognised.

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