The Supreme Court in its decision handed down to-day in the appeal brought on behalf of the four Jewish butchers of Szemle, Fleischman, Mann, Lakunishok and Schneider, one of them an old man of 73 and one a boy of 15, has found them not guilty of the charge of murdering the local veterinary surgeon, Avischenis, and has accordingly quashed the sentence of twelve years’ imprisonment passed on the three older men by the lower court and of five years passed on the boy, annulling also the heavy compensation sums which the accused were ordered by the lower court to pay to the widow and mother of the dead man.
The Supreme Court has come to the conclusion that Avischenis was murdered, and has dismissed the plea of the defence that he had fallen into the well by accident while going home drunk in the dark from the slaughter house but has returned a verdict of murder against persons unknown.
At the same time it has found the four Jewish butchers guilty of having concealed the body when they found it on their way home from the slaughter house, and has sentenced the three older men on this count to one year’s imprisonment, and the boy to one year’s detention in a reformatory colony.
Jewish opinion in Lithuania is much more resigned to the new verdict, since it rules out further possibility of antisemitic agitation on the ground that Avischenis was murdered by Jews, the verdict being returned against persons unknown, who might as easily be non-Jews.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
