LAWYERS OFFER

Hokitika Guardian, 15 February 1933, Page 3

LAWYERS OFFER

TO SAVE ACCUSED MAN

INNOCENCE OF CLIENT.

LONDON, February 8

Has’ there ever before- been -a lawyer so supremely confident in the innocence of his client—a man sentenced to death for murder by poisoning—that he was willing to risk his life, to prove his client’s innocence? Such a lawyer has been found, in Cologne. Dr Hermann Mannhejmer has offered to take a dose of poison, identical with that administered by his client, Dr Richter, a Bingen physician, to a hospital nurse gained Merters, who was alleged] to have died in consequence of the administration of the po: s on. Dr Richter was sentenced to death in 1929 for murder by poisoning, but, later, the sentence, which ■w.’.s confirmed hv the Sup.eme. Court of Appeal, was commuted tp one jot life imprisonment.

. DEMAND FOR NEW TRIAL. Dr Mannheimer, liowever, lias never ceased to believe in the innocence of his client and to plead his cnee. The poison, he declared, was administered by the doctor to tile nurse in the course of medical treatment which the nurse was undergoing. The poison, in itself, was not capable of causing death, and the nurse’s death was due to other causes. This view was strikingly confirmed by Professor Flury, the chief of the Wurzburg University Medical Faculty. Dr Mannheimer has now- in a fifty statement to the Ministry of Justice, demanded a retrial of Dr Richter, stating that both his client and himself are prepared to take strophantin in exactly the same quantity, and bv exactly tho same method, as was said to have caused the death of Nurse Mertens, in order to prove the harmlessnes's of the -poison, and the innocence of Rielfer.