GAOL AND STIGMA

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 405, 13 July 1928, Page 7

GAOL AND STIGMA

Strange Case of John Meikle FORTY YEAR’S FIGHT FOR REPARATION (THE SUN’S 'Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON, To-day. IN the annals of the New Zealand Parliament there is no stranger case than that of John James Meikle, now an aged and bent old man, who has launched petition after petition praying for redress for wrongful imprisonment in the eighties. Something like £3,000 has been paid to Meikle, but nothing has been paid since 1910, and it is still open to question whether a grave and possibly irreparable wrong has been adequately righted.

A T eighty-five years of age Meikle, now living in Auckland, appears as a broken, pathetic figure who has borne through 40 years of life the burden of a terrible injustice. His case was repeatedly revived as a sensation of the “eighties” and “nineties,” but nowadays it is a thing of yesteryear, and in Parliament the perennial Meikle petition appears to be regarded fairly widely as a rather amusing hardy annual. Briefly, the facts are that the man was convicted of sheep stealing in 1887, when he had a farm in the backblocks of Southland, and sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment. He served the term in Lyttelton Gaol, but on his release gathered evidence with which he prosecuted the chief Crown witness, one William Lambert, for perjury. His rase succeeded. Lawyers, newspaper reporters, farmers, all testified against Lambert, who was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment, from which he was liberated, after serving over two year, in recognition of bravery exhibited in saving life at Invercargill. Although the conviction of Lambert did not automatically establish the innocence of Meikle, it nevertheless undermined the whole structure of the case on which he was convicted. In the minds of reasonable people it showed that he was entitled to a strong presumption of innocence. PURSUIT OF REDRESS Having sent the perjurer. Lambert, into the confinement which he himself had suffered, Meikle began his lifelong fight for reparation. Here he was handicapped by several factors. Judicial opinion decided, then and later, that his own personal character, apart from the episode of the alleged sheep stealing, would not bear the closest scrutiny. He was shown, when a commission investigated his case in 1907, to have lied under the oath when cross-examined concerning his relations with a certain single lady in Invercargill, but it might have been assumed that this was purely a sideissue. It was further held against him that he raised loans on the prospect of payment of liberal compensation by the Government —that is, that he gambled with his chances of securing financial redress. Thus the archives of Parliament contain a copy of a document in which he promised to pay F. W. Oakley the sum of £4OO. in return for a loan of £33. if he was successful in his claims upon the State. This F. W. Oakley, by the way, is now chief messenger in Parliament Buildings, where so many of Meikle’s petitions are lodged. This gambling on nebulous prospects does not, however, alter the fact that recommendations that he be paid £5,000 were twice rejected or modified by the Government, and that the recommendations of the M to Z petitions committee, which has examined his claims since 1921, and has consist-

ently recommended that he be pa Vi £4 a week for the remainder of his life, have been just as consistently ignored. PARALLEL TO SLATER CASE The history of the case reveals a parallel to the famous Slater case, now occupying the attention of the British Court. And there it is, hidden in the bulky volumes in which the Parliamentary records and documents are treasured. In 1887 Meikle occupied an 800-acre farm at Tuturau, Southland, alongside a large block known as Islay, which was owned by the New Zealand Mortgage and Investment Company. Between the neighbours, represented on the company’s side by a manager and his staff, there had been no love lost for some time, and there were quarrels over trespassing sheep, fences, and boundaries, with the result, in one instance, that Meikle was imprisoned for one month for assault. Subsequently the company found that it was losing sheep, and put on a rabbiter named William Lambert as a private detective, with a bait of £SO offered him if he could secure a conviction. This Lambert did, but the manner of his doing it was not shown until seven years later, when Meikle had spent the intervening period in a prison cell. Bringing his action for perjury, Meikle was able to show that Lambert had secured two Islay sheep skins, branded, earmarked and freshly killed, from an employee at the Islay homestead. These he “planted” in an outhouse on Meikle’s property, and after that the concoction of a story to support such damning evidence was easy. PETITIONS TO PARLIAMENT When he had got Lambert “put away” Meikle began his long series of petitions to Parliament, and the case was an embarrassment to successive Governments. Pages of Hansard arccovered by discussions of the question in 1895, 1596 and 1897. In these years Meikle was paid £294 18s lOd, this being the amount of the costs involved in his prosecution of Lambert, and £SOO in a lump sum, which apparently was a form of compensation. Dissatisfied with this. Meikle continued his agitation, and in 1907 his case was investigated by a Royal Commission, which returned a somewhat indecisive report in return for the £675 which it cost the Government. As a result of the commission’s report. however, the sum of £5,000 was placed on the Supplementary Estimates in 1909, but by 37 votes to 26 the House decided to reduce the vote by £4,999, leaving a net result to Meikle of £l. Again in 1910-11 a vote of £5,000 was placed on the Estimates, but the vote was reduced to £2,500 on the motion of Mr. (now the Hon.) W. Nosworthy.

immediately claim it by making a mark with his heel at the spot where he made the catch. DURATION OF MATCHES (14) It is agreed that the duration of all matches played during the tour shall be 40 minutes each way. with the exception of the first match, which will be 35 minutes each way.

Meikle signed for this amount under protest, and still claimed further redress. Since 1921 every committee that has examined his plea has reported that it be given favourable consideration. but nothing further has been granted him. and the position to-day is that his name, despite all his efforts, remains on the prison records, it having been shown that an Act of Parliament, against all precedent, would be

required before they could be altered, while in all he has been paid £3.295 3Ss lOd as compensation for the heavy legal expenses, loss of property, humiliation and suffering incurred through his imprisonment and his 40 years’ light for reparation.