WRONG MAN HANGED.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume XI, Issue 3531, 20 July 1920, Page 6

WRONG MAN HANGED.

SCAFFOLD ORDEAL. Twenty years ago an innocent man -was arrested for murder, convicted, and "hanged," and now he is to be voted £IOOO by the Kentucky State legislation by way of compensation. The man who has been eventually freed from the suspicion of complicity in u i .rons crime, is a farmer named Pin vis, belonging ro Jackson. He was charged with the murder of on" William Buckley. The trial was sensational in the extreme, and Purvis was convicted and sc.-.renced to be hanged. On the day fixed for the execution a thousand neighbours flocked into the to witness the hanging. The trap was sprung, and Purvis disappeared, but when the seriff and doctors went beneath the platform to confirm thch death they found that j the noose had slipped, and that Pur- j vis was only badly dazed. The sheriff prepared to hang the prisoner a second time, but the crowd refused to allow the execution to proceed, declaring that the hand of Providence had saved Purvis. He was therefore returned to' gaol, while the rase was referred to the courts for decision. The Supreme Court of the State ordered that the execution should take place. Public feeling was so strongly against the hanging of Purvis that the question became the chief issue in the next election for State Governor. One candidate , Mr Maclaurin, declared if he was elected he would commute Purvis' sentence to penal servitude and eventually pardon him. Maclaurin, elected by an immense majority, kept his promise and released Purvis after the latter iad spent two years in gaol. (

The freed man returned to his home and married a former sweetheart, and they lived happily together for many years. One naturally supposes that the memory of his awful ordeal on the gallows woujd oeeasionally Teturn to him as some horrible mareAfter many years the truth came to light. A man named Joe Beard sent for the sheriff and a clergyman on his deathbed and swore that another man had killed Buckley and that he had seen the deed done. Mr Yeager, as a result, is carrying a bill through the legislature to appropriate £IOOO to Purvis to compensate him for his terrible experience on the gallows, and to reward Mm for two yearsj 1 service on the convict farm. A first cousin of Buckley, the murdered man, is supporting the measure, ■which, it is generally believed, will j pass.