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Hokitika Guardian, 25 August 1927, Page 2

Tjik Sacco-Yanzc-tti case has reached its climax after providing world-wide interest. It was a remarkable case, and probably tho Lnited States is the only country in the world where it could have been enacted as it was. It has .been a very long drawn out trial, and lmd become a feature in the American daily news, till it grew in interest which had a world-wide clientele. The men have now been executed. after a long persistent and insistent appeal for a reprieve. One of them at least, according to the cabled news went to his doom protesting his Innocence. Although tho element of doubt as to the guilt of the accused was put forward with a persistence which created in the minds of many who could not he conversant with the details of the crime and all the evidence, a doubt, also, and much in(l'ientia.l assistance, was marshalled in the effort to intervene. But to all the appeals ami to all that was said the legal and lawful authorities of the United States were adamant. Appeal after appeal was made in The effort to stem the course justice was disposed"to take, but without avail. At this distance. and looking to those men on whom the responsibility of the refusal rested, it must he confessed that although justice has moved so tardily in this case the result in the end was that determined by the considered judgment of those responsible after very mature consideration. There are many features in the ease of a disquieting character, and the most impressive was the long-drawn out delay foe carrying out the sentence. If the authorities were agreed as to the guilt of the accused, it seems to be something in the way of refined cruelty to delay the sentence for so long. Tho agony of mind the men have undergone in the years of waiting must have been in itself' a greater penalty than the swift stroke of the electric shock which was to end it all. Perhaps, on tho other hand, the authorities waited ■nr something st.ill to he disclosed, for it is doubtful if all the culprits of the crime had been traced, and so waited—but iu vain. The story of tho crime will go down in the annals of American history but it should awaken in tho niimls of ttit-, people tho necessity for revising if not reorganising the methods of administering justice in A merica.