Court Reserves Decision in Appeal from Death Sentence on Simche Hinkis

Judgment was reserved today in the appeal from the death sentence on Simche Hinkis, the 23-year old Jewish police corporal who had been sentenced to death for the murder of an Arab family of five between Tel Aviv and Jaffa on August 25. The court, composed of Judges MacDonnell, Baker and Kermack, reserved decision after listening to a four-hour argument by Mordecai Eliash, counsel for Hinkis.

Eliash argued against the death sentence on the ground that the lower court had convicted Hinkis on the strength of expert evidence only and that even if circumstantial evidence were accepted premeditation had not been proven and therefore the death sentence should not stand.

The court asked public prosecutor Sherwell to argue the premeditation point. Speaking for fifteen minutes Sherwell attempted to show that Hinkis broke down the door of the Arab house and had carried a rifle with the intent to kill.

The youthful police corporal, redrobed and bewhiskered, sat apparently uimoved during the five-hour session, flanked by British constables armed with rifles who overflowed the former Russian compound that now serves as a court. The constables good-naturedly kept back the large crowd of Jews eagerly awaiting the result of the appeal.

Great tension marked the trial which opened in Jaffa January 30. Hinkis was sentenced February 5. The charge against him was that on the day of the crime after learning that Benjamin Goldberg and his friends had been murdered, Hinkis removed his police cap and the number of his regiment and joined the crowd that stormed the Arab house in which five were killed and two wounded. The entire case of the prosecution was predicated on reports of experts who identified the marks of the cartridges that were fired with those on Hinkis’ rifle and on reports of Hinkis’ movements in the neighborhood on the day of the murders.