THE COLONIST. SATURDAY, APRIL. 12, 1919. CRIMINAL APPEAL.

Colonist, Volume LXI, Issue 1, 12 April 1919, Page 4

THE COLONIST. SATURDAY, APRIL. 12, 1919. CRIMINAL APPEAL.

The Minister of- Justice was waited upon at Wellington this week by a deputation which urgedNhim to advise the exercise of the prerogative of mercj in favour of the woman Alice Parkinson, who was tried at Napier in 1915 for the murder of a man at whose hands* she suffered most grievously, found guilty of manslaughter, and sentenced to imp-isonment for life. The same request has been repeatedly urged upon Ministers before, though we do not know that it had previously been brought before Mr Wilford, who on this occasion returned a firm and statesmanlike answer. "It is an axiom accepted in an ordered society," said Mr Wilford, "that the offenders against its laws must pay the penalty for disobedience. Were none paid, there would soon be no law. The thief who is sorry is not forgiven, and sent away to commit, if he chooses, more theft. The penitent is not absolved without! doing penance. Wrong-doing would dominate the world if repentance was the punishment and forgiveness the reward." The woman, added the Minister of Justice, was tried in a Court of Law before a Judge of wide experience, and it seemed to him that for a Minister of Justice in a case like the present to review the sentence imposed, if he were able, would be wrong and unjustifiable. There can be no question that the Minister of Justice adopted the only proper attitude in declining to interfere with the Courts, even in a case which makes so strong an appeal to popular compassion as that of Alice Parkinson. For him to have done otherwise would have been to establish a most dangerous precedent. Nothing so quickly saps the foundations of society as any concession to the right of private vengeance, either by the courts themselves or by those who have the power to I review the judgments of the Courts. Anything savouring of. what is known as the "unwritten law" must be steadily refused recognition in this country. ' This is not to say that in the Parkinson case the due vindication of justice requires that the unfortunate woman shall serve a life sentence. The subject of the deputation drew from the Minister of Justice some interesting remarks on a grave defect in our judicial system. This is the absence of. a Court of Criminal Appeal to which.a convicted person would have the right of appeal on the facts. "It is, in my opinion," said Mr Wilford, '*& travesty on-justice that the question of a. change-of venue in a civil case may be taken even to the Privy Council, while a man or woman tried for imuv der and sentenced to imprisonment for life has no right, to appeal even for mitigation of sentence." . To :Mr Wilford belongs the -credplfc of having ew deavoured to establish in his Crimes Amendment Bill of last year, which passed the House of Representatives, but was rejected by the Legislative Council, the English system of criminal appeal, and we share his hope that the principle will soon form part of the criminal law of the Dominion. Humanum est errare is a law from which judges and juries are not exempt, and a judicial system which has cognisance of the fact in connection with civil cases only is seriously defective.