CONVICTION OF INNOCENT MEN.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1269, 25 November 1884, Page 3

CONVICTION OF INNOCENT MEN.

The London correspondent of the Age writes : —" Talking of murders, one cannot but have the conviction forced on one that every year in this country unfortunate persons are consigned to the gallows for crimes of which they are as innocent as the judges and juries who convict them. We were nearly having a case in point the other day, when three Durham miners were tried for murdering a policeman in a pit village under circumstances of great brutality. Thanks to the perfection of our criminal system, the one of the trio who has sinoe been proved to have been the pvinoipal in the tragedy was unhesitatingly acquitted, and, having stood his trial, can n.nv be no further molested. The second man, who pl-yed only a minor part in the crime, and the third man, who played no part in it at all, were as unhesitatingly convicted. The date for the execution of the pair was fixed, and it was only when on the very brink of the scaffold that the innocent man was saved by the manly and selfsaorifleing confession of his fellow-convict, who destroyed his own slender hopes of mercy by a candid version of the real faots, lie has since been hanged, and the man whom he rescued from a. dis-

graceful grave has been set at liberty, or, as it is insultingly termed, pardoned for a crime which he never committed, but for which, had he had solely to rely on the intelligence of a British jury, he would most certainly have had to pay the penalty. Cases of this nature may well excuse the indisposition of juries to convict, even in cases where the evidence in tolerably clear, especially where it is of a circumstantial description."