THE INDIAN’S CASE

Hokitika Guardian, 22 January 1931, Page 7

THE INDIAN’S CASE

A MISTAKEN VIEW

(Exchange)

The agitators for the release from gaol of the Indian, with pretentions to skill in therapeutics, who is serving a term of imprisonment on a charge of manslaughter, seem to have, to some extent, changed their ground. Their plea was based in the first place upon the ground that the community was suffering a. grievous wrong through its deprivation of the services of the prisoner who, describing himself as a herbalist, seems to _ have reached out after a practice that "'as not confined to the use of herbs hut embraced the whole field of medical science. They have now added _to this plea an almost equally curious one, namely, that there was a miscarriage of justice at the trial. H there had been a miscarriage of justice, it was, of course, possible for the prisoner to secure redress by application to the Court of Appeal. But an appeal would have been fruitless. Ahl> defended though lie was, the juiy had no doubt ns to his guilt, and the Chief Justice, in inflicting sentence Upon him, did not hesitate to describe him as a charlatan. That lie had an extensive clientele seems to he unquestionable. Nor is this wholly ship)Suing,

It is observed in a publication, which has just been issued, that “it is remarkable that recourse to quack remedies is a propensity of the intelligent as well as the unintelligent, of the educated as well as the ignorant, of the rich as well as the poor.” AVo arc not concerned, however, with this circumstances so much as with an extraordinary statement that was made by the Minister of .Justice to the deputation that waited on him at Bedding recently with reference to the case. Air Cobbc said that the only statutory authority foi: reviewing tiesentence was the Prisons Board, and, though he qualified this statement b> reference to the practice of the Board to review the ease of a prisoner after one-half of the sentence had been solved, he repeated that it was the Board that was the authority by which the sentence would have to be reviewed. To say this is to elevate the Board into a position it was never intended to occupy, which it docs not occupy, and which it should not occupy. The Board does not possess the personnel which would qualify it to exercise an authority superior to that of the Supreme Court. Even it it had, it could not, in the very nature of things, ho provided with the material that would enable it to review, in a true light, a decision of the Supreme Court. It is not a Court of Appeal.

Tho lan - provides the meafirt by which an appeal may be made against a sentence, And, though iMr Cobb" protests that the Cabinet cannot intervene, it is the fact that the Cabinet does possess the power to remit sentences. The real business of the Prisons Board is to recommend remissions of sentences, not because prisoners have been unjustly sentenced or because people may foolishly think that it would lie in the interests oi society that prisoners should be released, but because, in the Board’s judgment, prisoners have been sufficiently reformed to admit of their being discharged or released on probation. In the exercise of its discretion the Board has made many wise, and a few strange recommendations which have produced curtailments of sentences but have all been founded on the assumption that there are reasonable grounds, wholly dissociated from the justice or injustice of the sentences, on which prisoners may he either conditionally or unconditionally released. A complete misconception, however, of the functions of the Board is betrayed in the suggestion that it is empowered, as an appellate authority, to review sentences inflicted by the Supreme Court or any other court.