PRISONERS SENTENCED

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 8, 5 October 1920, Page 8

PRISONERS SENTENCED

">NE DECLARED AN HABITUAL ClUraAI, l • : -Q' Chief. Justice (Sir Bobert Stout) .«q sentence on five prisoners in the •pfeme Court yeßterday. Mr. J. PrenoeviJle (Crown I/aw Office) appeared or the Crown. James Alexander Will (Palmeraton North), represented bv Mr. A. B. Siev wrlght, had been found guilty of embezzling £150, while a pay clerk in the employ of the Defonco Department at Palmerston. Mr. Fievwright stated that the offence had been committed over two years ago, the jrisoner in the interval having served as pay clerk with troops overseas and on a, trar.Eport. His military career had been without- bleminh. Counsel asked for ''leniency on Ui;b ground. His Honour Baid that he possessed no power to allow probation; but that he would impo..o a light sentence. Will was accordingly sentenced, to sir months imprisonment. Mr. G. Watson appeared for William Pope, guilty_6f petting fire to a house at Feuding, and asked for leniency on the ground that the prisoner had previously borne a food reputation. His Honour, in sentencing tho prisoner to 18 months' reformative detontion, remarked that he had. no power to' allow probation. The offence was a serious one. as human iifo might havo been endangered by it. Eoberfi Burgess (WeJliugton), with a, list, of aliases, guilty of theft, was sentenced to two years' Imprisonment with nard_ labour and declared an habitual criminal. The prisoner's record was a bad one, and amongst other crimes included assault and robbery. As the prisoner left the dock the Ohief Justice remarked: "Unless you behnvo yourself, you may. pever get out of gaol. For three thefts at Napier, John W. Quayle was sentenced to ten months' imprisonment; and Edward Bonnar Collins (Hamilton), for breaking, entering, and theft, way sentenced to reformative detention for |wo years.