Clemency!

An Appeal to New N.G.

Legislative Council.

THERE is a general expectation that the inauguration of the Legislative Council system in New Guinea in May next will be marked, as a special act of clemency, by the review or reduc tion of some of the sentences imposed on white men in New Guinea in connec tion with assaults on native labourers.

There is a growing feeling that some of those sentences were unnecessarily severe to the point of brutality. That applies particularly to the Larkin case.

The Pacific Islands Monthly believes that in this case there has been a cruel miscarriage of justice, and it hopes that officialdom will yet see its way to do the fair thing rather than wait until public agitation compels the N.G. Ad ministration or the Court to order a review of the case.

James Larkin, 43 years of age, an educated man of superior type, who served with distinction as an airman in the War, is at present at Tuncurry prison camp, N.S.W., serving a sen tence of 10 years penal servitude for murder, imposed upon him by Judge Wanliss in the Central Court in Rabaul.

Larkin was savagely attacked on his plantation and injured by a native labourer who was suffering under a sense of grievance, Larkin threw him off; and subsequently arranged that he be spreadeagled and flogged by native servants and by Larkin himself, until the native collapsed. He was taken to his quarters, and died some days later, apparently as an indirect result of the flogging.

The Judge, without the assistance of a jury, and on his own responsibility, found that this was murder and sen tenced accordingly.

The crime—and crime there was, because the flogging was brutal and unjustified—was clearly manslaughter, and the punishment imposed by Judge Wanliss was excessive to the point of being ridiculous. There cannot be murder unless there is intent. Other white men who have since been prosecuted for causing the deaths of native labourers in very similar circumstances have been imprisoned—and rightly so —but not for longer periods than two years.

It is hoped that the new Legislative Council of New Guinea will commence

a career of usefulness in the Territory by appealing to the Administration for what might be called clemency in the Larkin case—but which would actually be nothing less than justice.