MAY BE DELAYED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 July 1942, Page 4

MAY BE DELAYED

EXECUTION OF LEONSKI PRISONER UNPERTURBED. LIQUOR LAW VIOLATIONS IN MELBOURNE. (By Telegraph—Press Association Copyright) (Special Australian Correspondent.) SYDNEY. July 19. The sentence of death by hangingon the American soldier Leonski, for the murder of three women in Melbourne, may not be carried out for three months. The lengthy proceduie to be followed culminates in actual reference of the case to President Roosevelt before authority can be sent to Australia for the carrying out of the sentence. Leonski is stated to be unperturbed by the sentence and even to have made grim jokes about it. When he was returned to his cell, he is reported to have said to his guards: “I am going to give up smoking. It is bad for the throat.’ He added that he had been ready to die since he was 16. He was anxious to see what was “on the other side. ’ A good deal of the prisoner’s time in prison and at the trial has been spent in ’making pencil sketches for which he has a considerable talent. His cell is decorated with them. They are mostly of women. The trial has aroused tremendous interest throughout Australia. A prominent Sydney psychiarist has suggested that Leonski be kept under observation for a further month to prove beyond doubt his mental condition. The law and medicine, he said, did not see eye to eye on the question of insanity. A synchopathic personality might know what he was doing was wrong and yet consider himself justified by virtue of certain delusions he possessed. The trial has also lifted the curtain of Melbourne's liquor trade. The “Melbourne Herald” says that some of the revelations of flagrant and open violation of the Licensing Act have been “astonishing and disgusting.” Leonski himself was stated to have consumed 25 beers and four or five whiskies in three hours at one hotel. Sunday and after hours drinking in hotels were mentioned as a matter of course. The considerable number of young women drinking in hotels was also brought into prominence.