THE REPRIEVE OF ROBERTS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9663, 30 November 1909, Page 4

THE REPRIEVE OF ROBERTS.

Koberts, the last man who committed a murder in Christchurch, has been, reprieved. The defence failed to prove that the man was in sane, and he was quite sane enough to expect confidently that he would be reprieved. A young and pretty woman, little more than a girl, was brutally shot by Roberts, and despite the jury's verdict the death sentence passed on the convict has been commuted to one of imprisonment for life. After this it will be difficult for the Cabinet to allow the death sentence to be carried out in any future case that may arise, arid it really looks as though the feeling against capital punishment is growing strong enough to bring about its abolition. *The idea of wreaking vengeance on the criminal tor the wrong be has done is most repulsive to a refined and dispassionate mind. The treatment that is meted out to a criminal should be controlled by •a spirit of compassion, combined with a recognition of what is essen ■ frial in the interests of society, and known to be reformative in effect so far as the individual is concerned. The death sentence should not, in our opinion, be passed in any case. It is a sentence that is utterly unjustifiable; it is simply legal murder, and legal murder is no more justifiable than any other kind of murder. The reprieve of Roberts is, perhaps, the beginning of a truer view of the crime of murder on the part of the Crown, although the ground of the reprieve is a palpable absurdity.