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To: Gay State Conservative
Breaker Morant...one of the very finest English language films ever made.Major Thomas's closing argument was outstanding...both as an acting performance as well as the points he was actually making.I'm pinging you,naturalman,because of a short exchange we had on the story some time back.IIRC,I said that I believed all three should have been found not guilty and you,who served as an officer in the Australian Armed Forces,felt that they deserved to be convicted.

My opinion hasn't changed...I assume yours hasn't either! ;-)

More or less, although I will make the distinction between being convicted and being executed (I believe it was right they were convicted - but I am not convinced the sentence was fair), and also some distinction between the defendants.

As a number of British officers (by which in this case, I mean, those regarded as British by the Court, rather than seen as colonials) convicted of similar offences were merely cashiered, I think Morant, Handcock, and Witten could be regarded as having been unjustly treated by being sentenced to death and life imprisonment respectively (Witten was released from his life sentence after only two years suggesting there would be quite a lot of agreement with that). But Morant was educated enough to know the rules of war, and to understand that he was breaking them, so I believe the guilty verdict was justified, and the sentence would have been justified in my view as well, if not for the comparison with British officers (in particular Lieutenant Henry Picton who not only sat on Morant's 'court' but personally commanded the firing squad and personally shot Visser in the head.).

Handcock is a different matter. He was not a well educated man, except in his very limited field of providing veterinary care for horses. He probably did not know that Morant's orders were illegal, and that he should have therefore not obeyed them. While ignorance of the law is no excuse in law, I find it rather suprising his sentence was not commuted as Witton's was - especially seeing Morant had specifically accepted personal responsibility and sought to clear him.

There is a current petition to issue a posthumous pardon on the grounds the three men did not receive a fair trial. If that succeeds, I certainly won't see it as an injustice - even if guilty, they were entitled to a fair trial and if they didn't get it, they should be pardoned.

38 posted on 10/24/2014 10:15:45 PM PDT by naturalman1975 ("America was under attack. Australia was immediately there to help." - John Winston Howard)
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To: naturalman1975
While ignorance of the law is no excuse in law

The US Supreme Court recently ruled that it is.... at least for cops

41 posted on 02/13/2015 11:53:12 PM PST by GeronL
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