LAW’S MISTAKES

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 186, 7 August 1936, Page 3

LAW’S MISTAKES

♦ TRAGIC SEQUELS INNOCENT PEOPLE SUFFER SOME WORLD-FAMOUS CASES. j Eighteen years to wipe out the ; stigma of a wrongful conviction! Such has been the terrible ordeal of an Exeter nurse, who has at long last cleared her name. And her bitter experience is another illustration of the need for a method whereby criminal cases in Britain may be impartially reviewed, writes the well-known London journalist, Mr. T. W. Wilkinson. Miscarriages of justice, we are assured, are extremely rare. Nonsense! How often is the evidence presented at a criminal trial absolutely conclu--1 sive? Great store is set by ideritifica--7 tion, and yet criminal annals are s strewn with tragedies of mistaken -1 identity. > Adolf Beck, who was twice wrong- , fully convicted, was identified by 11 women on the first and five on the second occasion—women who had seen the guilty man for a compara- i tively long period, some of them for j 1 two or three hours at a stretch! j r Twelve persons were equally posi- ' 1 tive in their identification of Oscar ; 1 Slater, who spent 181 years in Peter-1 head Prison for a crime he did not “■ commit as a man they had seen ■ watching the house of Miss Marion . Gilchrist at Glasgow, and a number i. of others declared that they had seen f him running away from that house a after the murder in it. As everybody e knows now. they were all mistaken. Missing Cartridges. So in the case of William ThompS son, of New Cross, twice sentenced, once to three years’ penal servitude, for frauds of which he was innocent. He was identified by no fewer than 21 ~ witnesses, among them the actual culprit himself. e Handwriting, again—what a basis it. r may be for a verdict! On two occasions Mrs. Gooding, of Littlehamp- - ton, was wrongfully convicted of sende ing defamatory letters and postcards, e Take the case of William Habron, i of Whalley Range, Manchester. One t day Habron threatened, in the pre- / sence of a number of persons, to shoot i Police Constable Cock dead before s midnight. At 11 p.m. the officer was I found shot dead. Footprints near the 'body corres- ? ponded with those of Habron. It was > discovered, further, that six hours be--1 fore the crime he had asked at a shop for some cartridges, and, though he i had not purchased any, subsequently ? three of those shown him were miss- ? ing. There was consequently a strong : case against Habron. Alibi Breaks Down.

' Forced to stand his trial, he put for- ' ward an alibi that would not hold 1 water, and then stated that he and his brothers had gone to bed on the night ■ of the murder at the unusually early . hour of 9 p.m. This assertion also : was disproved, witnesses stating that they had seen William and one of his ' brothers drinking in a public-house shortly before closing-time (11 p.mj. Everybody in court thought, therefore, that justice was taking a propel’ course when Habron w r as sentenced to death. He was, however, reprieved to be told five years afterwards at Portland that Charles Peace had confessed to the murder of Police Constable] Cock. The shock was so great that > the poor fellow had to be taken to the infirmary, where he passed the lew days before his release. Judicial mistakes, in fact, are not uncommon, in spite of all safeguards to protect innocent persons from wrongful conviction. More, they always will occur, for they cannot be eliminated from any system of jurisprudence. For Father’s Honour. In France they handle these things better, chiefly owing to a remarkable miscarriage of justice. A school-

master named Peter Vaux was convicted of arson, and sentenced to penal servitude for life. He was ultimately transported to New Caledonia, where he died after undergoing 22 years’ punishment. All along he protested his innocence and on his grave was placed a cross, inscribed; Here lies Vaux. I He has gone to ask justice of God. His son, Armand, resolved to devote himself to the rehabilitation of his father’s memory. To this end, after nearly 20 years of effort, he induced a constituency to send him as a deputy to the Chamber. There he succeeded in getting the law altered, with the result that his father’s case was brought within the jurisdiction of the Court of Cassation, the supreme court of France. Two years later the conviction of Vaux was annulled and 100,000 francs compensation granted to his family. Thus, after 43 years, a judicial wrong was righted! Under the law which was passed on

the initiative of Armand Vaux Ihe Court of Cassation is given power of revision in any case where, after a conviction, something has been discovered establishing the innocence of the convicted person.