From DOUGLAS LOCKWOOD
DARWIN, June 12.

Mr. Justice Kriewaldt held a unique appointment in Australian law.

He was constantly called upon to impose penalties on aborigines who not only did not understand the white law but had a separate code of their own.

A Supreme Court Judge in any of the six States presides at perhaps 12 murder trials in his lifetime.

Martin Chemnitz Kriewaldt sat on 35 murder trials in his first seven years year and about 40 altogether.

A majority of those were tribal murders committed on native settlements and missions.

The evidence regularly showed that the black man in the dock had killed a tribesman on orders for his elders. Refusal to do so would have meant his own death at the hands of efficient tribal executioners.

In these circumstances Mr. Martin Kriewaldt was called upon more often than others to temper justice with mercy and always to draw upon his own knowledge of native customs.

Clemency

I never knew him not to be generous when generosity was desirable and the law made it possible.

Albert Namatjira served three months instead of six months’ gaol on a liquor offence because “the big feller judge” as he was known to the natives showed him clemency.

Frequently he allowed his deep understanding of human nature to influence his pronouncements from the bench.

In Alice Springs a month ago he directed that plaintiff and defendant in a civil action should go out in the sun and talk it over. They did.

He had what is perhaps the biggest circuit of any Supreme Court Judge of Australia — the 523,000 square miles of the NT, plus Cocos and Christman Islands in the Indian Ocean.

But I saw him in some odd corners of the outback, including a blistering week at Anthony Lagoon station on Barkly Tableland.

The temperature on the police station veranda where he heard a cattle duffing case was around 110 each day. The judge nevertheless appeared in his red fur-fringed robes on all occasions.

Dignity

Even in that remote wilderness he was determined to uphold the dignity of the court.

I remember a dramatic occasion when an accused man was found to have a .38 revolver in his pocket during the entire time the Judge heard his case.

Someone had forgotten to search him.

Mr. Martin Kriewaldt always helped junior members of the profession but was impatient of poorly prepared briefs. [Editor’s note: The clipping ends here; residue of tape suggests that there was another piece affixed.]

Source: Unidentified clipping, in the Frederic C. Eberlein genealogical files