ESCAPED SCAFFOLD

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18613, 8 July 1930, Page 5

ESCAPED SCAFFOLD

PRISONER’S TWO APPEALS. DEATH SENTENCE COMMUTED For the first time in the history of the Court of Criminal Appeal a man stood in the dock of the Lord Chief Justice’s Court in/London making his second appeal against a conviction for murder. For the second time he failed. On the occasion of the previous appeal he was fighting for his life. This time he was fighting for freedom, for the death sentence had been commuted to one of penal servitude for life. This unprecedented action in permitting an appeal to be heard twice was due to the action of the Home Secretary (Mr Clynes). By the Criminal Appeal Act of 1907, under which the Court of Criminal Appeal is constituted, the Home Secretary has the power to refer any criminal matter to the Court. The man who occupied the unique position was George Fratson, who was j convicted at the Manchester Assizes of j the murder of George Armstrong, a hosier, at Rusholme, Manchester, who was found lying dead in his shop in a pool of blood. He was severely injured about the face and the carotid artery was severed. Mysterious Blood Stain When Fratson first appealed to the Court of Criminal Appeal leave was given for Chief Inspector Batley, head of the fingerprint department at New Scotland Yard, to give evidence. He said he had examined a piece of card board belonging to a collar-box found in Mr Armstrong’s shop which had not been made an exhibit at the trial. There was a blood-stained mark on it which might be the impression of a finger, or a thumb, or a part of the palm of a hand. If however, the mark were made by part of the human hand, it would seem to be neither the hand of Mr Armstrong nor that of Fratson. Speaking in support of the new appeal. Mr Harry Allen said that since Fratson had been reprieved, many detailed investigations had been made. Prints of the palms of Fratson's hands had been taken, and it appeared that the print on the piece of card-board was not a print of Fratson’s hand. The Lord Chief Justice: Is the argument that, if things are found in a room where a man is murdered and some of those things have not got on them the finger-prints of the man who is charged with the murder, he must be innocent? Mr Allen submitted that the print on the cardboard must be that of the man who had committed the crime. It was stressed against Fratson at his trial, said Mr Allen, that a raincoat which he said he had sold could not be found. The absence of the coat played a very important part in predjudicing the jury against Fratson. It now turned out that the raincoat had been recovered by the police from the person to whom Fratson had sold it. It was analysed, and the analyst reported that no blood had been found on it. Two Assumptions It appeared that Mr Justice Macnaghten had informed the Home Secretary that, when Fratson said he had sold the coat, he (the judge) was under the impression that he might have disposed of it in some other way. The judge's summing up amounted to misdirection on the facts as they ought to have been before the Court. It was a fundamental principle of

British justice that the prosecution gave evidence of all the facts of a case that were known to them, whether they were favourable or unfavourable to the person accused. That principle was not adhered to when Fratson was put on his trial. As a result Fratson was the victim of a very grave miscarriage of justice. If the jury had had evidence of the new facts relating to the piece of cardboard and to the raincoat, it was strongly probable that they would have acquitted Fratson. The Lord Chief Justice: You are asking us to make two assumptions—one, that the mark of blood on the cardboard was made by someone implicated in the murder; and another that only one person was concerned .in the murder. Mr Allen said the Home Secretary had felt it his duty to refer the case to the Court on the newly discovered The Lord Chief Justice: Is there any ground, so far as you know, for believing that, while Fratson has been in prison, he has shown signs of insanity. Mr Allen: I have no information about that. Chief Inspector Batley, called by Mr Allan to give evidence, said he had reexamined the piece of cardboard which bore the imprint of part of a human hand. He had compared that imprint with the impression of Fratson's palm. Air Allen: Was the impression on the cardboard caused by Frason? —No. j . For the Crown Air Hemmerde, K.C.. j submitted that even if another person j was present at the murder it was diffi- i cult to get rid of the fact that Fratson j was clearly a principal in the second j degree, even if he was not a principal in the first degree. In his earlier confessions he said that ! he knew that the other man was contemplating violence, and was armed to effect it. The grave cfoubts which had been in the minds of the Home Office and their advisers vanished when the real nature of Fratson’s confessions appeared. The case did not rest merely on Frason’s statements, which were corroborated in material particulars by the discoveries of the police. Purely Negative The Lord Chief Justice (Lord Hewart) delivering the judgment of the Court, said that certain arguments undoubtedly became possible if it were assumed that that brutal murder was the work of one person alone. There was however, nothing to convince an impartial mind that that was the fact. Indeed, in no small part of the statements made by Fratson himself the allegation that two persons were concerned in the murder was embodied. As the result of further examination of the piece of cardboard. Inspector Batley was now able to say that the imprint on it was not the imprint of any paVt of Fratson’s hand. In that state of the matter, what was the effect of the piece of cardboard on Fratson's case. In the opinion of the Court it was nothing. The matter was purely negative. It could not seem to have any importance except on the unproved assumption that only one person was concerned in committing the crime. With regard to the raincoat, there was no evidence that Fratson wore it at the time of the commission of the murder. He had, indeed, never suggested that he did. Even if the medical evidence were correct that bloodstains would have appeared on it if it had j been worn by the murderer, the stains , clearly could easily have been removed. Again, it was not in the least necessary to assume that Fratson was the only person concerned in the crime. On sufficient evidence, and after a right direction from the judge at the trial, the jury had returned a verdict of guilty. There was clearly^some very

Striking corroborations of Fratson's own statements, which could not leave any reasonable doubt of his guilt. One statement he explained as being a delusion. The remarkable fact remained that the delusion proved to be true. The Court saw no reason to alter the conclusion at which it arrived previously—that the appeal should be dismissed.