MURDER OR NO MURDER.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 15, Issue 782, 28 April 1870, Page 4

MURDER OR NO MURDER.

fFrom the New Zealand Herald, 14th April.! The case of Walter Tricker, which at the present time is deeply agitating the minds of the colonists in another portion of the Colony, is not of local, but of general importance, By it th e constitutionr \ lights, the personal liberty of every settler in the Colony is infringed. What has happened to Trickei might have happened to any of us, More than gix years ago Tricker was arraigned for the murder of a Mr Rayner, at Bangitikei, and condemned on the evidence, of a half-caste boy, named Hamilton, who in one portion of his evidence was proyed to have committed perjury- Tricker's defence was an alibi; he accounted for his time so as to have narrowed the possible period of the commission of the murder to a space of so mail}' minmd it vas urged at the trial,

that he could riot have travelled the distance to and returned from the scene of the murder within that period, Nevertheless chiefly on the evidence of the half caste, Trieker was convicted. We well recollect the general impression that prevailed at the time, of hi:; innocence of the charge. The matter was taken up by the .Rev. Mr Stock and others, The ground over which he was said" to have ridden to the spot where Rayner was murdered was carefully examined, and it was shown beyond contradiction that it was physically impossible for Trieker to have committed the crime, unless he could have ridden through swamps, over sandhills, and at the rate of eighteen miles an hour. This fact, which was scarcely made the most of at the trial, not even proper maps of the district being produced in Court, was afterwards represented to the authorities, and the consequence was the commutation of Tricker's sentence. In the face of this alib\ and or the known perjury of Hamilton, the Government dared not risk the danger of committing a judicial murder ; neither could th*y come to the determination to release him. Clearly there was a miscarriage of justice here, an infringement of the constitutional liberties of the subject. Either Trieker was guilty or he was not guilty. The evidence on which he was convicted was so shaken as to render it .impossible to hang him : why then was he not released 1 ? He could not be guilty in a degree, for, if he did not actually commit the murder, he was in no way implicated with its commission by others. There was clearly then in justice no alternative between capital punishment or immediate release. A different course was however pursued. He was kept confined to a miserable cell; for six years the man has rotted in jail. But to the credit of the people of the people of Wellington, and especially to the conduct of the Rev. Mr Stock, Tricker's case has not been allowed to be shelved. Successive Ministries have been petitioned, and two commissions have been appointed to reconsider the evidence. The report of one of these commissions, appointed in 1867, concluded by saying that the commissioners were satisfied as to the alibi set up by Trieker, but in the face of certain statements made by the fellow prisoners of Tricker's, as to admissions made privately by Trieker —and there is good reason to place little faith in these statements—they did not feel themselves justified in recommending the legislature to take fresh action in the matter. This case is one which it. is well should be sifted thoroughly. The half-caste boy, Hamilton, should yet be put on his trial for perjury; and the other boy who was living at Rayner's at the time of the murder, and who was not produced at the trial, but only examined subsequently to the conviction, should be subjected to full examination. A. most important question not only to Trieker himself, but to the Colony, has to be solved, —Whether an Englishman, in English Colony and under English law, can be kept a prisoner, the verdict under which he is confined having been shown to be a mistaken one. Such a case occurring in England, and, after public agitation, having been left uncared for by the Government, would have produced little short of a revolution. The Governmeno of the country dared not have allowed the matter to pass without the fullest and most public and open reinvestigation. The people of Wellington have now taken the matter up, and will we trust, demand a full and fail - investigation. The matter is one which will also we trust engage the attention of the Assembly. As yet the investigations made by the commissioners have been private in their nature, the evidence being taken in secret. There seems to be too much of a desire that the promised investigation shall be similarly conducted. What the people of New Zealand should insist upon is, that the investigation be conducted in open court, and with every facility for publication.