DEATH SENTENCE

Waipukurau Press, Volume XXVIII, Issue 219, 11 September 1933, Page 2

DEATH SENTENCE

Epidemic of Crimes

AGAINST WOMEN

JURY AND “PROVOCATION”

SYDNEY, August 31

There has been something in the way of an epidemic of crimes here against women, due to jealousy or some similarly vindictive feeling. Within the past two months two girls have been brutally murdered by men simply and solely because they did not care about the men and did not hesitate to say so. A few weeks ago a labourer twenty-four years old, professing to be in love with a girl of fifteen, who refused to have anything to do with him, first threatened her with a razor, and then battered her head with a stone tied in a handkerchief.

In this case the magistrate expressed disgust at the brutality of the ruffian, and gave him a substantial term of imprisonment. But apparently there is a type of miscreant here that regards a woman’s life as of small account, and is quite prepared to sacrifice it an outburst / of furious anger or vindictive jealousy. Wife Shot In Street. The last and worst instance of the is the shooting of Hita Jones, a woman of twenty-four, by her husband nt Cessnock. Mrs Jones was living apart from her husband, with her four-year-old daughter. She and a girl friend were going out for the evening to a dance when they were suddenly confronted by the husband. He told the wife that he was going away and ■wished to see the child. She refused to allow this, and turned to walk •away, when her companion, Miss Cartwright, heard the report of a revolver and felt a bullet strike her. When she struggled up and looked around Mrs Jones was lying dead on the road and the husband was disappearing in the darkness. An alarm was raised and the district scoured without suc-

cess. But next morning Eric Jones appeared at the police station to surrender himself for the crime. To the police he said that he had not intended to kill anyone; he meant to fire in the air to frighten his wife. But at the inquest and the subsequent examination before the Court some remarkable evidence was produced which seemed to leave the murderer little chance of escape. “No Forgiveness.” Miss Cartwright testified that to her knowledge the wife had left the husband because of ill-treatment, and that he had threatened to kill her. Mrs Cavanagh, the dead girl’s mother, gave evidence that the last time the father had come to see his little daughter ho had again quarrelled with and abused his wife. The police produced a letter found in Jones’s possession written by the dead girl’s father in reply to a request from Jones that his wife should be induced to return to him. The father, in this letter, says that he will never ask his daughter to go back; he regrets that he did not settle accounts with Jones “the day you hit flor with a bottle,” and he concludes with a very forcible sentence: “A black fellow would not have treated his gin like- you have ill-used her and for what you have done there can be tn. forgiveness.”

These rebuffs seem to have preyed upon Jones’s mind, and, not satisfied with telling his wife that he would kill her, he discussed the matter at some length with his married sister, Mrs Klease. This woman bore witness that he had several times said in her pressence that he would “do for Rita” and definitely said that he would shoot her if shfe tried to leave the town. Mrs Klease warned him that he would suffer for it —“You’ll get the rope round your neck,” she told him. “No, I won’t,” was the brother’s answer—“l’ll only get about twelve years; I’ll be able to learn a trade, and I’ll get 3s a day if I get a long sentence.” As if this were not sufficient evidence of premeditation, Jones had left two separate documents, arranging for the ease

of his little daughter, "in the event of

anything happening to Eric and Rita .Tones. ” Fired a Second Shot Of course, when Jones had to stand h.s trial hr. was anxious to escape and tried first through his counsel to convince the Court that he had no deliberate intent’on of k : llmg hi; • it’e. But over and above all .’his evidence of intention, there was the testimony of one Goodwin, a Cessnock minor, -ho heard the first report of ;he revolver and saw the girl fall. He swore that after the woman had fallen and was struggling on to her feet, the husband, who had run away, came back across the re: d and held out his hand, with ‘‘something glittering” in it, toward her head, there was another shot and she fell again. But Jones had still another card to play, and he produced as a witness a. doctor, who gave the opinion that he was “somewhat below normality. ” The visiting doctor at Long Bay eaol declared that Jones “is dull, but certainly not insane,” and the jury aid judge were evidently convinced that he was fully responsible for his actions. Jury’s Verdict The plea of insanity broke down; but the jury, while bringing in a verdict of guilty, recommended him to mercy on account of “certain provocation.” The jury apparently thought that Jones was justly “provoked” because the murdered girl objected to being hit on the head with a bottle, she had left him because she did not like to be treated “worse than a blackfellow’s gin,” and she would not let him see her little girl because she refused to be insulted and abused in the child’s presence. It is strange how reluctant some men are to come to a decided conclusion about even so clear a case as this, when it may possibly involve capital punishment. However, Mr Justice Street promptly sentenced Jones to be hanged; end we have now to see if the philanthropists, who usually raise an outcry in such cases, will move to secure a reprieve for this callous ruffian on the ground of the “inhumanity’’ of the sentence.