Notes on Recent Crime
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X3100400301 |
| Published date | 01 July 1931 |
| Date | 01 July 1931 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
THE
POLICE JOURNAL
VOL.
IV.
NO.3
JULY
1931
Notes
on Recent Crime
JAMES VAUG
HAN,
aminer and lay preacher, was tried
at Monmouth Assizes before Mr. Commissioner Cave for
attempting to murder his wife by putting sulphuric acid in
her early morning cups of tea. Vaughan
had
contracted a
liaison with awar-widow, and it was suggested by the defence
that the wife had herself
put
the acid in the tea to punish
him.
The
judge told the
jury
they had to ' choose between
a diabolical act on the part of the wife and an equally diaboli-
cal act on the part of the husband.'
The
man was acquitted.
An Italian of good family, named Martinucci, killed his
English wife, to whom he had been married a year, in a fit of
rage upon a confession by her of adultery.
'The
punish-
ment for adultery is not death,
but
the Divorce Court,' said
Mr. Justice Humphreys, and he left it to the
jury
to say
whether the provocation was great enough to reduce the
crime from murder to manslaughter.
The
jury
took the
merciful view and the man was sentenced to seven years'
penal servitude.
Wallace, an insurance agent and chess player, apparently
devoted to his wife and of a kindly peaceable disposition,
was found guilty before Mr. Justice Wright at Liverpool
Assizes of murdering his wife by battering her head in with
eleven ferocious blows.
The
evidence was
unconvincing-
fifteen minutes, at the most, opportunity for the
crime:
a
mysterious telephone call which, unless one assumed the
man to be guilty, proved
nothing:
arather suspiciously cool
demeanour; and that was all.
The
jury
must have argued,
, if he
didn't
do it who
did?
'-a
quite illegitimate way of
looking at circumstantial evidence.
The
Court of Criminal
Appeal have taken the unusual course in a murder case, for
the second time in twenty years, of quashing the conviction,
x
321
To continue reading
Request your trial