TWO CANADIANS

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 142, 11 March 1919, Page 9

TWO CANADIANS

GRIM. SEQUEL TO' A CRIME.. Before Justices .Darling, Ivory, and Salter in the Criminal Appeal Court recently, two' Canadian soldiers appealed against sentences of seven years' penal servitude passed upon' each of them at tlm assizes for shopbreaking and robbery with violence. In the. dock one of the accused said he had been drinking heavily, on the day in question, and did not remember having committed any assault. The other;, when attempting to make an explanation of his conduct, broke down and sobbed bitterly. He said ho was a long way from home,- and had never before brought disgrace on his mother and father. He had volunteered "to come to Europe to fight, and lied not come all the way'to be disgraced and \ sent to prison. Mr. Justice Avery, in giving.the sentences of the ' Court, s,nid the prisoners were soldiers in the Canadian, railway troops, stationed at Purfleet, and were convicted at the assizes for breaking into a shop and stealing a quantity of goods, and, further, with having on the same night robbed with violence a,.man who was going to his barge lying in the river off Grays. The evidence satisfied the jury that prisoners were .guilty of both charges. The charge of robbery with violence was a very ftrions case of that kind. The man was proceeding to his barge when he was struck on the back of the head by one of the prisoners and knocked to (ho ground unconscious. He soon recovered his senses, to find one of the prisoners -kneeling on his chest and punching him with his fist while the other one was kicking him on the hqfld with his foot. They robbed him of nil his money, or as much as they could get, and then left him. There was evidence showing that the. prisoners were the two men on the spot. On the following morning they were arrested>hen going.back to canip, and the goods stolen from the shop were found on them. The learned Judge at the trial (Mr. Justice Coleridge) said it was open to him to'have the men flogged with the cat-o'-nine-tails, but ha should, instead, sentence each to seven years' penal servitude... So far as prisoners' previous record was concerned there was nothing to show that either, of them hud b°en convicted before of any offence, "nil there was no doubt the learned Judge would not hiivo oassed a long sentence of penal servitude unless he had taker, the view that he ought not, under the circumstances, to order them to beflogged. This Court took a different view as to the proper punishment to be awarded. Seven years' penal servitude was a long sentence upon h ms'n who had not been convicted of any offence. In the circumstances, having regard to the brutal character of the assault, and as a warning to all soldiers and others who were in this country that such things would not be permitted, tlio Court directed that each the prisoners should be flogged with twenty strokes of the cat-o'-nine tails, and in addition should go to prison, with hard labour, for twelve months,