The Case of Jack King

Letter to the Editor "V"OUR remarks on the severe sentences imposed by our jury-less Supreme Court deserve attention.

As I live out in the bush, my informa tion about current happenings is apt to be scanty and sometimes unreliable; but is it not a fact that not long ago a man was sentenced to ten years’ hard labour for shooting at or in the vicinity of a native, in “uncontrolled” area? I believe it was stated that the man in question was being punished for the company he kept.

Was that the charge brought against him?

I am referring of course, to the case of Jack King. People in New Guinea are so horrified at the conduct proved against those who were in King’s company that they have been unwilling to associate themselves with any sympathetic appeal in the case of King. Nevertheless, quite a few of us feel that King was not the type of man to commit crimes deserving of such a sentence, and that it is a fact that he has been butchered because of the company he kept.

I have known King for some years, and I met him in Salamaua soon after his re turn from that trip with Schmidt and Schultz. He told me how those men had behaved in there —much of which I myself suspected from personal observations in the Purari—and how he had been forced because of their threats and the weak state of his own outfit, to stick with them.

Having some experience myself in “uncontrolled” areas, and knowing King, I believed him, and despite the unsavoury nature of the whole case I am prepared to say that I don’t think King merited his sentence of ten years.

It is not British justice, either, to put the boot into a man on one charge to make up for others which cannot be proved—or are, perhaps, only suspected.

We want a jury here. It is too much to expect one man, even if he be a second Solomon, to pass judgment on such cases.

It is impossible for any Supreme Court judge to understand the conditions in bad country, if he has never been there “on his own,” with no one else to make decisions for him.

I am, etc.,

J. D. O’Neill,

Wau, 18/6/1936.

Prospector.