FREED BY LORDS.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20363, 21 July 1934, Page 28 (Supplement)

FREED BY LORDS.

LONG FIGHT WON. CASE MAKES LEGAL HISTORY. 'PHONE CALL TO LEEDS PRISON. The telephone bell rang in tbi governor’s office at Leeds Prison. “Hullo! Hullo! The Home Office speaking. William Maxwell is to be released immediately. . .” Less than an hour later a 75-year-old Hull herbalist walked through the prison gates a free man—and disappeared. William Maxwell had won a dramatic fight for liberty—and won it in the last round. His appeal was allowed that day by the House of Lords, the highest court in the Empire. A legal authority states that he believed it was the first time the House of Lords had allowed an appeal previously dismissed by the Court of Criminal Appeal. The Law Lords regarded their decision as so important that Lord Sankey instructed his secretary to telephone the Home Office. The Home Office rang up the prison. A telegraph boy knocked at the door of a house in Sandringham Street, Hull. In a buff envelope was a message to say that William Maxwell would be home that night. Hurried preparations were made for his home coming. Late that night, when a “Daily Express” correspondent called at the house, he had not returned. ‘‘l do not know what has happened to him,” said a young woman who opened the door. “I expected him home before now. He may have gone to London, where he has a daughter who is married to>a doctor.” “ Good Past.” Maxwell was sentenced at York Assizes for the manslaughter of a woman, on whom he was alleged to have performed an operation. The case went to the Court of Criminal Appeal. The conviction was upheld. That, normally, would have been the end of Maxwell’s fight against hie sentence. Only in the rarest cases can a criminal case go on to the House of Lords. The Attorney-General, however, decided that a point of law was at stake, and issued a fiat for the case to be heard by the Lords. Maxwell’s appeal was on the ground that his trial was prejudiced by counsel him about a charge of manslaughter of a woman some years ago, when he was acquitted. The Court of Criminal Appeal held that the question was admissible, because Maxwell had first given evidence about his “good, clear moral past.”