Was Ten Years ' Gaol a Sentence improperly Imposed?
p. 10 · Read in the full issue
IN December, 1935, in Rabaul, J. J. A.
King (known as Jack King) was found guilty of “attempting to do bodily harm by firing on natives”, between August-September, 1934, and was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment.
He now is serving that sentence in New South Wales.
Was there here a miscarriage of justice? Dees anyone in New Guinea, with first-hand knowledge of the facts, believe that King has been wrongly or excessively punished? If so, will he send particulars, confidentially, to the “P.1.M.”?
There is ground for suggesting that King was savagely punished, by one of those notoriously irresponsible New Guinea Courts, merely for keeping bad company.
King was away prospecting in the untamed Sepik area in 1934, with Ludwig mi s d uijs?auentlv h these men -hot'"natives raped native and was ’ sentenced to death for
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were n^Dr^oned^ ’ awav to Germany before the c°se “broke” V Recently, by accident, the editor of the “P.1.M.” met an Australian solicitor who was on his way abroad, on active service. The latter disclosed that he had been led, by certain circumstances, to
examine the case of Kins, and he was convinced that King had been wrongly convicted. He said that King had merely joined the party of Germans in the Sepik district for protection—the natives were hostile, and his own party was small; that King was not guilty of the outrages for which the others had been properly punished; and that the evidence which convicted King of having fired at inoffensive natives was inconclusive and should never have been accepted in a court of law. King, it is said, was not the type of man who would be guilty of murder and rape.
The solicitor said that, had he not been called away on active service, he would himself have moved to bring the matter on appeal before the High Court—although the procedure is horribly expensive, and King, apparently, has no wealthy friends. will be remembered that it was about the time when King was sentenced (1935 - 36) that the New Guinea Supreme Court “ went ga-ga”-imposed heavy sentences on missionaries for compara tively trivial offences; and those sen a£t6rwards celled Dy otner authorities.
It may be that King was the victim of circumstances and atmosphere. Ten years’ penal servitude is a frightful sen tence. He has not yet served half of it.