COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEAL.

Press, Volume LVII, Issue 17121, 16 April 1921, Page 6

COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEAL.

EEDUCTION OF EXCESSIVE SENTENCE.

(from our own correspondent.) , . LONDON, March? 3

After having served seven years in the Army, Thomas Charles Dawson became a gardener under the Board of Agriculture in New Zealand, and in 1915 he. rejoined the Army for service. Owing to a disability he was discharged with the rank of sergeant nearly three years later, and his conduct sheet was marked "Very Good."

Since then Dawson was convicted at the' Lincolnshire Assizes for having written a letter demanding money witli menaces, and he was sentenced to liv« years' penal servitude.. Against this sentence he appealed, on the ground of its severity; before tlie Court of Criminal Appeal, and the case was heard before Mr .Justices Darling, Avory,'and Greer.

Dawson handed in a written petition, which was read aloud, asking for tlie mercy of the Court, as he and his wife and grandchildren wore starving when he committed tlie s offence; of the,.enormity of whicli he was not conscious at the time. Ho asked'that some other punishment > might be . inflicted—-tho lash, if need.be—in order that his der pendants might not be deprivoty of their natural'protector, and be suujected to ihe stigma of pauperism. In' delivering judgment, Mr Justice Darling stated that the appellant had written demanding £lO from a woman who kept a publichousb. She had been fined for selling drink during prohibited hours, and the appellant in his letter to her said that there would Be further proceedings. He pretended that he was a man who could stop these proceedings, which, if tliey went on, might have the result of her losing the license. She took the letter to the police. The address riven in the threatening letter was watched, and the appellant was found to be the man who wrote' it. He had been convicted before of three trivial offences. This was the first serious offence that he had committed. His disability pension was automatically reduced, and ne had people depending on him. ite had doile a most unjustifiable thing in writing the letter, and the Judge, who had taken a serious view of the case, said that blackmail was a most grave offence. But blackmail, serious though it undoubtedly was, had its degrees, arid, having regard to tine appellant's career,.they had come to the conclusion that , the sentence of five -year*' penal servitude'was excessive;'' A proper sentence would be eighteen months' hard labour, and the sentence would be reduced to that, to run from tho date of conviction.