SUPREME COURT

Press, Volume LXXIX, Issue 23964, 3 June 1943, Page 6

SUPREME COURT

PRISONERS SENTENCED

“This was neither a manly nor a decent thing to do"," said Mr Justice Northcroft in the Supreme Court in Christchurch yesterday, when sentencing Leonard Douglas Brown, aged 26, a tractordriver, to imprisonment for six months with hard labour for the crime of bigamy. Brown, who had pleaded guilty, was married on December 21, 1939, to Margaret Annie Wilson at Dunedin. On April 24, 1943, at Kaiapoi, he went through a form of marriage with Nancy Diver. Clifford Fox, aged 23, labourer, who had pleaded guilty to charges of abducting and carnally knowing a girl of 15, was also sentenced to six months' imprisonment with hard labour, the sentence to be cumulative with other sentences which he was now serving. Fox. who was not represented by counsel, had nothing to say. Previously, when before the Court, he had informed the Judge that the offence had been taken into account by Mr Justice Blair when the latter had sentenced him at Hamilton. Mr Justice Northcroft stated that he had been in communication with Mr Justice Blair, and had been informed that when Fox was before the Court at Hamilton, he had not even been charged with the present offence. Furthermore, he had represented the girl as “an unsuspecting and Innocent bride” whereas, in fact, prisoner had taken her away from her mother for an immoral purpose and against the latter’s wishes. "You acted with deliberation and in defiance of her mother’s express wishes,” added his Honour, who also referred to Fox’s long list of offences. On the plea of Mr J. K. Moloney, on behalf of George Knox, aged 32. labourer, the prisoner was given probation for two years, provided that he took out a prohibition order against himself. Knox had pleaded guilty to five charges of forging cheques, two of uttering cheques, and one of theft from a dwelling. "If there is a breach of your probation,” his Honour warned Knox, “you will come up again on the present charges.”