Untitled

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 329, 16 June 1911, Page 4

A Maori youth who killed an aged gumdigger in order to obtain his money is in Mt. Eden gaol under sentence of death. The jury who he&rd the case recommended him to mercy. A section of the public, animated, no doubt, by a horror of the barbaric method of demanding one life for another, is petitioning the King's representative 'to stay the course of the law. A correspondent in last issue appealed on behalf of the boy, claiming that be is a half-savage, and therefore presumably not accountable for his actions. The obvious reasoning from the premise is that if all the youths of Tahi's race commit murder in the future, they, too, may expect clemency because they are "half-sav-ages." A state of complete savagery in the midst of alleged civilisation does not excuse a savago fol' committing the greatest of all crimes. But a State of more or less civilisation makes a community emotional and stirs it to an interest in the criminal. The point for the public is that nothing excuses murder; that a murderer is a menace as long ne he lives, and that the only place he can live in, so tint the community can be safe from him, is gaol. If the barbarity of breaking Tahi's neck is prevented by the public, it will be an iniquity to break the neck of any person who may hereafter slay another person in Xew Zealand. If youth can be counted as a reason for clemency, youths of criminal inclination in the future have public permission to commit murder. The public is not really concerned with the life of ■this Maori boy. It is concerned with the safety of the community, if by its kind intervention it is able to get the death sentence commuted in this ca.se, it declares that the death sentence is a barbarism and must disappear. The scientific view is that the Maori youth committed a crime he was unable to avoid committing. If lie were unable to avoid it, it is absurd to inflict death on him. We do not nowadays support the affirmation that "whoso sheddeth man's blood by man shall his blood tic tfhed," merely because private vengeance is not allowed. Instincts are controlled by the State, and the State still prescribes legalised death as a penalty for 1 murder. If the public is unanimous that this Maori boy's life should be saved, it confirms its dislike to the death penalty in any case, for if his life is< saved, it will be a crime to hang any future murderer. Judges have no option but to impose the death sentence in a proved caso of murder, but it is certain that there is not a judge on the Xew Zealand Bench who would not willingly delegate his awful duty if he were able. The real question for the public is, "What would have done with the Maori boy if you had seen him kill the gumdigger—<ind you were tiie law?" There is only one answer.

MURDER.