The Temuka Leader TUESDAY, MARCH 15, 1887. HALL'S ACQUITTAL.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1565, 15 March 1887, Page 2

The Temuka Leader TUESDAY, MARCH 15, 1887. HALL'S ACQUITTAL.

The Appeal Court has quashed the verdict of the Jury in the case of Thomas Hall, and has thus saved him from the gallows. He has been sentenced to death, yet he is not to die ; but is completely free of any responsibility as regards the murder of Captain Cain. How this has come about is not generally understood. Some people think that a jury having found him guilty' he cannot escape, but he must pay the penalty with his life. This is quite a mistake, Hall was found guilty, and sentenced to death, bat during the hearing of the case the judge allowed the Crown Prosecutor to submit to the jury evidence which in law ought not to have been admitted at all. It will be remembered that when the evidence which related to the poisoning of Hall’s wife was submitted counsel for the defence objected to it, and insisted that it was wrong to allow it to go to the jury. The judge ruled that it was admissible, and because it was admitted the case was appealed against, with the result stated above. Wrong evidence was allowed to be pat in ; the law regards it as possible that it was on that evidence the prisoner was found guilty, and therefore as that evidence had no right to be put in the prisoner ought not to be punished. This is reasonable and just. The fault lay in allowing the evidence to go in on the first occasion. The Crown Prosecutor and the Judge ought to have known their business better than to have allowed it to go in at all, for it did not matter much whether it went in or not ; the result would have been the same. The prisoner would have been found guilty without it, and he would have gone the way of Caffrey and Penn by this time.

One of the judges said that no jury could have found Hall guilty of murder on the evidence that was submitted in the case if their minds bad not been prejudiced by the knowledge that be had been guilty of the crime of having attempted to poison his wife. With that we thoroughly agree. Had Hall been tried on the same evidence before the same jury previous to having been convicted of the attempted poisoning of his wile be would have been acquitted, but that does not prove that be was innocent of the murder of Captain Cain. Had he been thus tried the result would have been that the jury would not have regarded the case so clearly proved that they would have felt justified in voting away the man’s life, bnt at the same time they and the public would have bad very little doubt of his guilt. The evidence was not sufficient to bang a man of good character—it could only have thrown the gravest suspicion upon him —but taken in connection with the prisoner’s conduct towards bis wife no one could have the slightest doubt as to his guilt. We have not the slightest doubt on the subject; we feel fully satisfied that Thomas Hall poisoned Captain Cain, and our reasons for coming to this conclusion are as follow :—Captain Cain was poisoned, Hall was traffiiking in poisons at that time, and subsequently be was detected in the very act of poisoning his wife. He bad an interest in the death of Captain Cain, just as he bad an interest in the death of bis wife, and the man that could poison one could poison the other. It is not likely that more than one person was practising the same game at the same time in the same family ; poisoners, we are glad to say, are not to be met with everywhere, and consequently the conclusion must force itself upon any one’s mind that it was Ball who poisoned the poor dying old man. While, therefore, the evidence in Captain Cain’s case was not sufficient of itself to prove the prisoner guilty, the strength and color given to it by the prisoner’s conduct towards his wife made it so, and the question is, Ought the jury to hove banished all thoughts of this from their minds ? The law contemplates that they shoo'd, but common sense will at once show that they could not do it. And, moreover, we do not believe that they were morally bound by their oath to put aside the character and conduct of the prisoner. They were bound to convict if they believed him guilty, but if they had any doubt about it they were to give him the benefit, of it. They had no doubt about it;they could not have any, and consequently very properly they found bim guilty. The jury that convicted him did their duty, and we feel certain very few think otherwise.

And now we cannot say that we regret the turn the affairs has taken. The stain and disgrace attached to murder has been indelibly imprinted on Hall’s name ; he is now 40 years old ; he is condemned to be kept in prison for the next twenty years, and it is not at all probable that be will live so long. Society would gain nothing by hanging him ; to hang is a barbarous and, we believe, a criminal way of punishing, and we prefer that he should escape punishment for the murder than that be should be legally murdered himself. We should like to see him suffer for the murder of Cain anything short of death, but as we are totally opposed to the infliction of capital punishment we cannot say that we regret that Hall has escaped it.