PUBLIC OPINION.

Patea Mail, 8 May 1882, Page 3

PUBLIC OPINION.

MBS O'SULLIVAN’S CASE.

After reading the report of Mrs O’Sullivan’s trial at New Plymouth, I must say that a very light sentence was passed on her, taking into view all the circumstances of the child-murder. The theory of the defence was that she strangled the child, not knowing what she was doing. It is not explained whether she knew what she was doing when she tied up the body and hid it away. Her own story was that the infant did not cry or show sign of life. This has to be taken with the clear fact that she tied a tape round its neck tight enough to strangle it. One incident in the case was new to me, and told strongly in her favor. After the connecting cord was severed from the mother, she knotted it on the child as a careful midwife would after birth. This showed a first impulse to save the child. It is supposed that a stronger impulse supervened, and .that to hide her shame she destroyed the child. This conflict of impulses is called insanity, the woman being so confused in this agonising moment as not to know what she was doing. On this theory of nonresponsibility, the jury seem to have acquitted her of the charge of wilful murder. Up to this point I can understand the jury’s mode of reasoning. s „ Her acta showed confusion of intent, rather than a deliberate purpose to kill. But then the jury didn’t let her off; they found her guilty of concealing the birth. lam puzzled by this turn of reasoning, because if she concealed the birth she also concealed the body, and that body had a tape round the neck as if carefully strangled. If the infant, when found, showed no mark of foul play, I could accept the theory of concealment of birth. How would'this fact tell in an ordinary murder 9 As the case stands, I cannot help concluding that the jury showed more confusion than the culprit. A.nother part of the defence was that the woman had been promised marriage, and that the faithless man is now dead. Notorious facts would qualify this statement by implicating more than one. This case is an utterly disreputable scandal, and those who do not wish for its repetition should mark their abhorrence of the crime and its surroundings. Patea Resident.