The 23-year old Jewish police constable Hinkis, accused of the murder of an Arab family of five between Tel Aviv and Jaffa on August 25, was today sentenced to death by a court composed of Judges Corrie and Copeland. The decision came as a complete surprise in view of the fact that yesterday the witnesses for the prosecution had failed to completely identify Hinkis as having been the policeman seen accompanying the attackers to the house.
Great tension had marked the trial which opened here January 30. The charge against Hinkis said that the crime was committed after Arabs had killed four and wounded five Jews, referring to the attack on Benjamin Goldberg and his friends, who were killed in Jaffa.
The prosecution claimed that Hinkis, learning that Goldberg and his friends had been murdered, removed his cap and the number of his regiment, grabbed a rifle 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’s rifle and with following his movements in the neighborhood on the day of the murders.
It had been generally believed that Mordecai Eliash, defense attorney, had satisfactorily proven that no case had been established against Hinkis. The death sentence against Hinkis is the second on a Jew. Joseph Urphali, also sentenced to death, had his sentence set aside on January 25 and a retrial granted. In Hinkis’s case an appeal has already been lodged.
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.
