THIRD TRIAL FOR MURDER

Taranaki Daily News, 13 December 1930, Page 7

THIRD TRIAL FOR MURDER

AN IRISH WIDOW ACCUSED

ALLEGED HUSBAND KILLING

THE JURY TWICE DISAGREES

SECOND CASE IN ’ HISTORY

By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright. London, Dec. 11.

. For the third time a 33-year-old widow, Mrs. Mary Ann Sproule, who with five children lives on a lonely mountain farm in County Tyrone, ie about to be tried in Belfast for the murder qf her husband. Twice the jury has disagreed after lengthy evidence. There is only one parallel in British legal history where a person has been sent .back for trial three times on a capital charge, and before bhe third trial in that base the Crown resolved not to proceed with the case and liberated the accused person.

Throughout the present case the widow has stoutly maintained her innocence, so unemotionally as to amaze everybody. She declared that her husband and children were drinking milk and her husband complained that it was bitter. She tasted it, threw it out and gave them fresh milk. Defending counsel passionately declared that accused was an ordinary country woman in poor circumstanced, practically Uneducated, and living on a lonely farm with five children. Where was the motive? None was assignable.-