THE CONVICT SULLIVAN AT HOKITIKA.

Colonist, Volume X, Issue X, 12 February 1867, Page 1

THE CONVICT SULLIVAN AT HOKITIKA.

(From the West Coast Times.)

The criminal sessions have closed. Several prisoners committed from Greymouth, after having undergone many months of confinement and degradation, have been made free men.. In some instances the grand jury refused to find a, true bill against them. In c t lers the petty jury acquitted them. In one case, of a man who has been four months imprisoned, and condemned throughout that period to wear the convict costume, the finding of the grand jury was that there had been no prima facie case for his committal. A more elaborate illustration of the miscarriage of justice could hardly be conceived. The anomalies will no doubt be quickly corrected by the appointment of a District Judge, and by the more frequent holdings of sittings of the Supreme Court. The main interest of the present session has centered in the cases connected more or less with the murder of Mr. Dobson. A jury has acquitted the accused man Wilson, of being a party to that foul transaction, and another jury has pronounced the ex-constable Carr " not guilty" of the charge of stealing revolvers from the Police Camp. A new phase in this extraordinary history has been shown by the information laid against Sullivan, the " approving" witness, for having been one of the principal actors in the murder of Mr. Dobson. This man Sullivan is a most remarkable character; and the circumstances under which he appeared in the witness-box are remarkable. He was condemned to death for the murder of James Battle, but saved from the gallows to enable the Crown to make use of him as Queen's evidence. A day or two back he made a kind of ostentatious boast in the witnessbox, that he was a convicted murderer, that he had confessed himself to be a perjurer, and that he was the vilest wretch in the colony. At the time he made this declaration, Mr. Sullivan, instead of appearing in the grey and yellow gai"b, and the heavy manacles that are appropriated to his tribe in other colonial Courts of Justice, made his presentment in the witness-box as a well-dressed, and, indeed, almost fashionably-attired gentleman. He wore a dark cut-away, a black velvet waistcoat, a blue silk necktie, a well-starched collar,. and—well we forget whether the authorities had provided the convicted and respited murderer and confessed perjurer and scoundrel, with a pair of kid gloves. At all events, he was very well got up, and presented a remarkable contrast to the unfortunate fellows committed —by a magistrate like Mr. Eevell to wit — to take their trial on untenable charges, and in the meantime, doomed to grey suits. We have even seen this gentleman, with the felon stain of blood on his hand, talked with in the precincts of the Court, by those who ought to have remembered that if it was part of the necessary policy of detective justice to make use of murderers as witnesses against their accomplices in villany, it is no part of their duty to * forget" that an unhanged murderer is no less a i murderer than if the gallows had received its due.

Some idea has prevailed during the last day op two that this particular unhanged murderer would hare another chance of getting his deserts, through the information laid against him for the " doing-to-death" of Mr. George Dobson. We are sorry to say that there is very little chance of the claims of justioe being thus met. We believe the information against Sullivan will not end in any practical result. The man is already (velvet waistooat and sky-blue necktie notwithstanding) sentenced to penal servitude for life; and the warrant by which he was sent to Hokitika to give evidence on the recent trials, contains a provision to the effect that ho shall be sent back whenever his services as a witness shall have been exhausted. So far as the purpose for which he was sent down are concerned, Mr. Sullivan's presence in Hokitika may now be dispensed with. He has been very useful in furthering the ends of justice, but we shall breathe all the mon& freely when the atmosphere is cleared of him. Mr. Justice Gresaon might make an order to $*• tain Suliiyaa here, to ue<;fc the infonjaatwu iwora

against, him, but ■■we "believe-it is not likely ; that lio w.H do so. If the information is further followed un, and the ease gone on with, it will have to bo dispose;! of in "Nelson. Should any examination of witnesses take place in Ilokitikn, it will, we; understand,, be within the gaol itself, so that under any circumstances the public will be deprived of -he sensational episode of seeing Sullivan transferred from the witness-box to the criminal's dock. If we are correctly inffirpied, however, the Eesident Magistrate will decline to hold any examination of tho kind within the gaol. The difficulties of prosecuting Sullivan for the murder of Mr. Dobsoii arc undor all the circumstances of the case, very great —sufficient in all probability, to save from the gallows a man who, no one will deny, deserves it as muc'i ;is any member of the gang of whose wretched history he has told tho story with an unblushing front, and an almost pride in his crime. "