CO129-584-14 Commutation of death sentences to life imprisonment. Includes 9 photographs depicting- [CN 3-42] Commutation of... 22-12-1939 - 17-9-1940 — Page 38

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during that period of complete coma getting up and

'

automatically doing things before he regains consciousness.

There is a still more curious condition here. It is a

condition of coma in which the accused did things which he did

not know he was doing at the time but subsequently remembered

and has again forgotten. I don't know what adjective to give

or how to describe that periodic coming and going of amnesia,

When he was charged at the police station on 24th March he

said not a word about this happening. He said "If I had not

cut him to death he would have cut me to death. Either he or

I had to die." There is no suggestion there that he did not

know it was at his hand his brother sustained his injuries,

and then he went on to give his reason. "I sent money home

to get this land for the family and now my brother has tried

to take that land for himself. He has put it in his name and

I have no share in it." There is ample motive. As you will

appreciate there is no suggestion that he did not know what

happened on the afternoon of the 22nd and yet this afternoon

he has forgotten again. This periodic amnesia again about

which none of the doctors know a wordĦ

If you will put that out of your minds, we come to the

other line of defence "My brother cut at me. Theni parried

the blow, I disarmed him. There was the chopper on the ground.

I was

I had the only dangerous weapon but he was unarmed.

sitting in my chair." (You will see the chair on the plan

there over by the east wall of the house and he was

standing by the trestle bed against the south wall. The

fight was over. Then he says "he had struck at me and I

had to strike him, so I went across to make a job of it, four

good smacks on the head with that chopper" one of them 4"

long and 14" deep. That is what, for the sake of a better