§ MR. HANBURY (Preston)asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, What is the crime for which the convict Bowles, recently sentenced to death for an offence which, if committed, was murder, is now undergoing penal servitude for life?
§ THE SECRETARY OF STATE (Mr. MATTHEWS) (Birmingham, E.)The convict Bowles was found guilty of murder by the jury. The learned Judge who tried the case reported to me that, in the present state of our information, this verdict could not be said to have been wrong; but that the case was not one in which the irrevocable sentence of death should be carried into execution, and that it might wisely be commuted into penal servitude for life, for if further inquiries should make the prisoner's innocence manifest, he could be released, while if they led to a clearer conviction 717 of his guilt, he would be under restraint and punishment. I entirely concurred in this opinion of the learned Judge; and I am still making inquiries into those parts of the case on which the evidence laid before the jury was incomplete.
§ MR. HANBURYgave Notice that, on going into Committee of Supply, he would call attention to the present system of reviewing the verdicts of juries and the sentences of Judges in capital cases, and move a Resolution that such cases should be formally dealt with by a regularly constituted Court of Appeal.