THE WAITARA MURDER.

Colonist, Volume LI, Issue 12493, 20 March 1909, Page 2

THE WAITARA MURDER.

DR. GOODE'S TRIAL.

[United Peess Association.]

New Plymouth, March 19. The third day of Dr. Goode's murder trial was occupied in evidence for the defence.

Mr Skerrett. K.C., occupied 55 minutes in opening the defence. He stated that it was useless to attempt to deny that the hand that shot Mrs Klenner- was the hand of the prisoner. The law recognised that in order to convict a man of crime there must be a rational mind, capable of considering if the act was right or wrong ; but if from physical or mental defect, hereditary, congenital, or acquired, he was unable to consider the consequence or motive of his act he was absolved from the consequences. It did not follow that because a man was acquitted of crime on the ground of insanity that he was set at liberty. In this case it was only a terrible alternative, the gallows or detention. He proposed to call evidence to prove that the accused was the victim of mental degeneracy, caused by excessive alcoholism ; that he was in fact a victim of chronic alcoholic insanity, and his mind was a perfect blank as to the crime. The accused rememberednothing from the noon of the day previous to the crime till his arrest. The accused's conduct "on the whole .was inexplicable, unless on the assumption that the man was hopelessly mad. He was quite incapable of judging his acts. .-..-. : A number of witnesses were called to prove that -Dr. Goode was a man, of spasmodic intemperate habits, and had delusions that ho was being persecute cd. ■- . . Dr. Beattie, the Superintendent of the Auckland Mental Hospital for the past twelve years, stated that he. examined accused bn the Bth of February. Ho found the whole; of his intelligence impaired, and. concluded that the man was undoubtedly insane, and that he was suffering from chronic alcoholic, insanity. ■