THE PENGE MURDER.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5215, 8 December 1877, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE PENGE MURDER.

(From the Law Timee.)

What may now be termed the Penge Murder presented features of interest to lawyers. The depraved ingenuity of the human mind from time to time produces new forms of crime which require the application of first principles, and the more closely principles are adhered to the greater is the probability that justice will not miscarry. We do do not say that starvation is a new form of murder, but the prulongucd, gradual " doing to death" of the unhappy Mrs. Staunton rendered the work of the law more difficult than is ordinarily the ease. Blackstone cites several analogous cases, which show that the law itself is old enough, the charge of murder having been brought home to the " unnatural son who exposed his rich father to the air against his will, by reason whereof he died," to " the harlot who laid her child under leaves in an orchard where a kite struck and killed it," and to " the parish officers who shifted a child from paaish to parish till it died from want of care and maintenance." Old as is the legal principle, the law is not so rich in clear statement that we can afford'to disregard the clear directions of Mr. Justice Hawkins, who, we may observe, has proved himself on this trial an exceedingly comptent criminal judge. " Gentlemen," said his lordship to the jury, " I may state the law to be this, that every person who is under a legal duty, whether such duty be imposed by contract, or ity the act of taking charge, wrongfully or otherwise, of another person, to provide the necessaries of life for such other person—every person who takes charge and has that legal duty imposed upon him is criminally responsible fsr the culpable neglect of that duty, if, by reason of that neglect, death ensues to the person so neglected ; and if the person so ncgleted, and to whom that duty is owing, is from age, health, insanity, or any other cause, unable to take care of himself and death ensues, the crime will be murder." One point raised on the trial-, although overruled, is instructive, as it calls attention to a branch of the law which, on the authority of the Attorney-General, is in a very unsatisfactory state, that is, the law relating to the criminal responsibility of a wife acting under the coercion of her husband. It was submitted on behalf of Elizabeth Staunton that, being the wife of a prisoner jointly charged with her, she was not in point of law responsible for the matters charged against her in the indictment—that she must be presumed to have acted under her husband's coercion. In answer to this, the Attorney-General said, "he was bound to admit that the law in reference to a woman acting under the coercion of her husband was in a very unsatisfactory state. It was all contained in Sir James Stephen's ' Digest of the Criminal Law,' in which he found this passage : 'lf a married woman commits a theft or receives stolen goods knowing them to have been stolen, she is presumed to have acted under the coercion of her husband, and such coercion excuses her ; but this presumption may be rebutted if all the circumstances of the case show that in fact she was not coerced.' It is uncertain how far this principle apples to felonies in general. It does not apply to murder." The objection asabove staled was overruled, the judge at the same time citing the case of the Mannings tried in the same court. • The statement of the law as cited must lie taken to be correct.