“MEANT TO MURDER HER”

Evening Star, Issue 19792, 16 February 1928, Page 3

“MEANT TO MURDER HER”

JUDGE DISAGREES WITH JURY HUSBAND'S ASSAULT WITH HAMMER [Per United Press Association.] AUCKLAND, February 15. With a cry as ho heard Mr Justice Reed sentence him to imprisonment for five years, Lawrence Mackenzie this morning collapsed in the dock and was carried below, He had been found guilty of assaulting his wife so as to do her actual bodily harm. Mr Allan Moody, counsel for accused, immediately drew His Honor’s attention to the fact that the court could not impose a sentence of more than three years, according to the Crimes Act. His Honor; That is so. I was under the impression that I was dealing with the question under another Act. The sentence will be altered to three years’ imprisonment. Mackenzie was yesterday found guilty of an assault causing actual bodily harm, the major count of attempted murder failing. The jury also made a strong recommendation for mercy, on the ground that accused was worried. “ According to the evidence,” said His Honor, “yon have been unfortunate in losing your farm, but you were fortunate in the results which followed on this brutal assault. If you had struck your wife in another part of the skull you would have been standing your trial for murder. You were fortunate, too, in having a sympathetic jury, I do not agree with the verdict, and 1 am satisfied that you intended to murder your wife; but your nerve failed. Yon got that hammer with the sole purpose of either killing her outright or stunning her and then turning on the gas.”