ATTEMPTED RAPE

Press, Volume LXXIX, Issue 23969, 9 June 1943, Page 4

ATTEMPTED RAPE

IMPRISONMENT FOR FIVE YEARS COMMENT BY CHIEF JUSTICE (P.A.) WELLINGTON, June 8. When sentencing Francis Ernest McLeod, who had pleaded guilty at Wanganui to a charge of attempted rape, to five years’ imprisonment with hard labour, the Chief Justice (the Rt. Hon Sir Michael Myers), in the Supreme Court to-day, said it was one of the most shocking offences he had seen in about 50 years’ association with f’e administration of the criminal law. “Let me read to you,” he said, “what the law was until quite recently: ’Every one is liable to 10 years’ imprisonment with hard labour, and. according to his age, to be flogged or whipped once, twice, or thrice, who attempts to rape or assaults any person with intent to commit rape.’ But on September 17, 1941, that law was altered. On that date Parliament passed an enactment abolishing corporal punishment. “I have to administer the law as it is, and I am not entitled to express an opinion as to whether the alteration made by Parliament was good or bad. wise or unwise. The law as laid down by Parliament must be assumed to express the will of the people, women a' well as men. As far as I am concerned. I must leave it at that. “But you are in a different position. You are at liberty to rejoice in the reflection that the law shows much more tenderness and sympathy for you than you showed for the poor, unfortunate, elderly, blind woman you almost throttled and then attempted to ravish. It is my bounden duty to impose a sentence that will not be light, but I doubt whether it is not lighter than you deserve.”