IMPRISONMENT FOR LIFE

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXV, Issue 4670, 5 March 1924, Page 2

IMPRISONMENT FOR LIFE

HiaeiNS’ SBMBNCB COMMUTBII. GAOL OR ASYLUM ? WELLINGTON. March 4. The death sentence passed on John Christopher Higgins, the Waikino murderer, has been commuted by the Governor-General, on the advice cf the Executive Council, to imprisonment for life. The Minister of Justice, the Hon. C. J. Pair, stated that the ground of commutation was that the Executive considered Higgins, from a medical point of view, was. insane at the time he committed the murder. All the doctors were practically agreed that he was suffering from chronic delusional insanity, the only difference between them and the alienists called by the Crown being that the latter were of opinion that prisoner’s insanity had not gone so far as to prevent him from knowing the nature an*! quality of the act. Higgins will be further examined medically, with a view to guiding the authorities on the question whether lie should be incarcerated in gaol or in a mental hospital during his. lifetime.

Phe Executive Council’s decision, to exercise the prerogative of mercy in the Higgins case is in accordance with an important development of English opinion on the subject during the last few years. The old law was that a man was responsible for his act if he knew he was doing wrong, but this position has been modified in England following upon a report of a special committee set up by the Lord Chancellor in 1923. One of its, conclusion;;, which have been considered by the Now Zealand Government in coming to a decision in the Higgins case, was as follows : “ Tt should be recognized that a person charged criminally for an offence is irresponsible for his act if the act is committed under an impulse which the prisoner was by mental disease deprived of any power to resist.”