REVOLVER INCIDENT

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 174, 24 July 1936, Page 7

REVOLVER INCIDENT

WRIT OF ATTACHMENT TWO NEWSPAPERS INVOLVED LONDON, July 22. Statements published in the Evening News and Daily Express arising from the proceedings against McMahon are the subject ot the application on the part of the AttorneyGeneral for a rule nisi for a writ of attachment against the editors and publishers of the papers concerned, on the grounds that the comments graveiy prejudiced a fair trial of the accused. The Attorney-General quoted passages from the Daily Express describing McMahon as a man with grievances against authority, and alleging that McMahon was kept under constant observation of the prisons doctors and mental specialists, declaring: “This is the case of a man who brooded over imaginary wrongs and allowed his instability of character to derange his native intelligence, and boasted that his views were non-sec-tarian and non-political.” The Express also published the statements of persons claiming acquaintance- witn McMahon. One of these statements was: *‘He has drinking bouts which are sending him crazy.” Other paragraphs of which the At-torney-General complained stated that McMahon was obsessed with the crazy idea tnat Sir John Simon and the Home Office were preventing publication of the Human Gazette. The Attorney-General also cited alleged incidents in McMahon’s life publishe I in the Evening News, declaring that there were grave objections to biographies of this kind and objected to other passages purporting to deal with the motives and mental state of the accused. The- Bench, including the Chief Justice, granted the application, the hearing being set down for July 27.