The Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prevalebit. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 11, 1886. JUDICIAL DISCREPANCIES.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1429, 11 December 1886, Page 2

The Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prevalebit. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 11, 1886. JUDICIAL DISCREPANCIES.

“Justices’ justice ” is a phrase frequently employed by those who would cast discredit upon the manner in which the law is administered by the “ Great unpaid,” and it must be confessed that in the Old Country, where the expression arose (ihough there is little justification for it in the Colony), the contempt which it expresses for the administration of the law is byno means undeserved. For example, the frequent letting off with a trumpery fine of ruffians who kick their wives with hobnailed boots, and the sending of youngsters to gaol for weeks or months for taking a turnip from a field is a sort of thing whiqji brings Justices’ justice into deserved contempt. Of that sort of thing happily we know little or nothing in New Zealand, but Judges’ justice is occasionally of a very varying quality. As a case in point, we may refer to what took place only on'Wednesday last. At Napier and at Invercargill, before the Chief Justice and Mr Justice Williams respectively, were tried two men for almost identical offences, viz.—breaches of the PostOffice Act, the one, Frederick Hill, at Napier, pleading guilty to seven charges of stealing post letters, and the other Frederick Dale, at Invercargill, pleading guilty to four charges of the precise same nature. Yet, while in the Invercargill case the man who pleaded guilty to four offences was sentenced to two years hard labor by Mr Justice Williams, in the Napier case the offender in seven cases was treated as a first offender under the First Offenders’ Probation Act and discharged under surveillance, and that by the very judge (Judge Prendergast) who, only a few weeks ago, laid it down that only “ young persons found guilty of silly acts for the first time ” were proper subjects to be brought under the operation of the Act referred .to. The Southland Naas, commenting on the wide discrepancy of treatment of these very similar cases of Hill and Dale, suggests that Judge Williams might recommend the Government to “ equalise the punishment,” apparently meaning that Dale, like Hill.Jshould be treated as a first offender. If this is what the News meant by equalisation, we entirely dissent, for we hold that Mr Justice Williams was right in regarding a man who, by his own admission, guilty of four offences as clearly not a first offender at all. If so, then most certainly he who is guilty of seven can still less expect to be regarded as a first offender. Hence we think that the Chief Justice was quite in error in* his treatement of Hill, who ought, in our opinion, to have been excluded from the operation of the Probation Act. Indeed, if there be many more such examples as this, which we feel sure is an altogether mistaken interpretation of the intention of the Legislature, we predict that Mr Tole’s well meant measure of last session will speedily be expunged from the Statute-book.