SUPREME COURT.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2263, 4 July 1881, Page 3

SUPREME COURT.

CRIMINAL SITTINGS. This Day, [Before His Honor Mr Justice Johnston. J The quarterly session of the Supreme Ooutt opened at II a. m. TUB NEW REGISTRAR. Mr Bloxam read his appointment as the Registrar of the Supreme Court, and also as Sheriff of the Canterbury district, DeputyRegistrar of the Court of Appeal. His Honor then administered the oaths of office. His Honor—Mr Malet : Before you retire from the Court on this occasion I feel it to be my duty—a pleasing one in one respect and painful in other—to express to you my sincere and cordial appreciation of the very valuable services that you have rendered to the Court and Judge during your occupancy of the offices of Registrar and Sheriff. Mr Malet then retired. GRAND JURY, The following gentlemen wore sworn as the Grand Jury:—Messrs S. 0. Farr, Joseph Palmer, J. Beaumont, George Armstrong, W. Baker, B. Blake, B. S, Harley, W. Buss, A. D. Austin, J. N. Tosswill, E. J. Edmonds, T. J. W. Shand, E. B. Cox, John Anderson, John Taylor, J. E. French, B. Pavitt, W. B. Sharp, A. Anderson, F. H. Brittan, and T. F. Baldwin. Mr Joseph Palmer was chosen foreman of the Grand Jury, THK JUDGE’S CHARGE.

, His Honor then proceeded to deliver hio charge to the Grand Jury, He was sorry to say that ho could not congratulate the Grand Jury and the country upon the state of the calendar before them that day, as he regretted to find —bo far as he was able to judge from the returns —that the number of indictable offences was greater than occurring in England and Wales. The crimes on the calendar were not, he desired to point out to them, at all attributable to want of means. The Grand Jury would see on examination of the calendar that there was not one case in which it was suggested that actual want —want that was of procurable necessities of life—had been the cause of commission of crime. On the contrary, it seemed to him that with us the amount of offences was rather a sign of prosperity, and not of depression, because the majority of them arose out of over indulgence in drink and over indulgence in general. This arose, as they would no doubt agree with him, from an accumulation of wages in the hands of the working classes, many of whom spent it in the way he had referred to. This appeared to him to be a very sad and very serious matter, and they must feel that those who were endeavoring by every means in their power to put down the sin of drunkenness were doing a good and great work. Though perhaps all might not agree with everything advanced by them, yet persons who were engaged in this work were entitled to the aid of all good citizens, so far as was possible, to put down the sin of drunkenness, which was at the root of all offences. But this was not all the . was required to be done to put down and repress crime, which might else become rife amongst them. There existed a class of men who were nothing more nor less than pests of society. These men were constantly on the outlook for drunken and inexperienced men, in order to rob them of their honest earnings, and who did not scruple to add violence to robbery. These persons were, he might say, under the present system of penal discipline, in no way deterred by the punishment inflicted. Recent reports and inquiries which had been made into the system pointed to the same result that had been arrived at some years before—viz., that the punishments for crime—under the present system—were by no means deterrent. The class of offenders to which he had referred, did not couut the cost of their offences, and were not deterred from the commission of them by the knowledge that they would have to go back to prison, to which they were well accustomed. So far as he could see, the way in which the sentences of the Oourt were administered were in no way deterrent, except it might be with respect to some first offenders. Not only were they not deterrent, but they were not reformatory. In this respect we in the colony certainly laged far behind other civilised communities, and this was certainly a far more important and serious question than people at first sight, |and on the surface, imagined it to be. The colony was spending —and very properly so—large sums of money on education, in the hope and expectation that in years to come great and important results would arise for the country, but we were also, to some extent, encouraging the commission of crime by the fact that the punishments provided under the present penal system were neither repressive nor reformatory. He earnestly hoped that the attention of the public would be directed to the great necessity of dealing with this most important question. No doubt a great deal had been done towards improving the general establishments of the colony, and he desired to say that it was not the fault of the persons in charge of these establishments that they were not deterrent or reformatory. They had not the room nor the appliances to carry out such a system as would ensure these being secured. There was no room in our penal establishments for classification or separation treatment of prisoners, without which it was well known by those experienced in those matters there could be no sound punishment or reformation. That separate system, it was well known, was impossible in our prisons, and they were obliged, from the want of accommodation and appliances, to place hardened criminals with those just entering into crime, and thereby groat contamination ensued, which was much to bo deplored. There was no doubt the resources of the colony were taxed very greatly to carry out the work of colonisation, but there was so much intelligence and right feeling amongst the people of the colony that he hoped ’ere long to see some steps taken to render the penal system of the colony far more effici nt than it now was. Occupying the position he did, and knowing so well the defects of the present system, he would be guilty of dereliction of duty it he did not take the opportunity of bringing the subject prominently before the public. He trusted that he should not be misunderstood In this matter. The officers who were administering the system did the best they could with the appliances provided for them, and discharged their duties with efficiency and zeal. He hoped the day was not far distant when they would be enabled to draft off the worst of our convicts, and give them such a punishment as would not only be deterrent and reformatory, but save the con-

t tamimtion of first offenders, and prevent most t effectually the formation of any organised , criminal class. [His Honor then proceeded t to refer to the salient points of the various t cases in the calendar.] j The Grand Jury then retired. , Mr J. W. White, Crown Prosecutor at , 1 Timaru, appeared to conduct the cases on be- [ half of the Crown, owing to the illness of Mr Duncan. 1 THE CASH OP JOHN MtJBPHT, 1 John Murphy was placed in the dock to re--1 oeive sentence on the certificate of the Court of Appeal sitting in error. ' Mr Harper appeared for the prisoner. ' The certificate of the Court of Appeal in 1 the case in error in the case of Regina v ' Murphy was read by the Deputy Registrar. 1 Mr Harper appeared for the prisoner, and moved on arrest of judgment on the oertifi--1 cate. Ho desired to point out that the indictment under which the prisoner was convicted had several counts, in some of which the prisoner was charged with having forged a document called a sale note. His Honor asked Mr Harper if he attached any value to the description sale note. Ho thought it only an undertaking to deliver goods. Mr Harper said he only desired to call his Honor’s attention to the fact that in the third, fourth, fifth and sixth counts it was set out that the prisoner was charged with forging a certain sale note. Now, the Court of Appeal had decided that the first two counts were bad, >nd had remitted the remainder of the counts to the Court to pronounce proper judgment upon. He should submit that the proper judgment was that the Court should discharge the prisoner. His Honor said that Mr Harper could not now raise the point that the third, fourth, fifth and sixth counts were bad on the ground of the said sale note occurring, because the point had not been taken in error, and the Court of Appeal had decided upon these counts that they were good. Mr Harper did not understand that the Court of Appeal had gone so far as to say that these counts were good. The practice that he (Mr Harper) was contending for has been carried out at home. [Case cited, 7 A. and E., the Ring v Brown]. His Honor called Mr Harper’s attention to a case reported by himself in England, Queen y Drury and others. In this case the whole judgment had been rov<r *1 on account of the Oadness of two counts. As regarded the arrest of judgment, he was not aware that anything could be urged in this. Mr Harper had come prepared to meet i this. The teat books laid it down that the i accused could move in arrest of judgment before sentence on anything occurring in the face of the record. He would presume that he was in the same position as if the prisoner i had just been tried, and was called upon, but not sentenced. His Honor said that he could not see that | this was the position Mr Harper was entitled ( to take up. Mr Harper said he should eon- ( tend that the Court was entitled to consider, 1 from the evidence, whether the prisoner was i guilty of any offence at law, ] His Honor said he agreed with Mr Harper t that he was entitled to move in arrest of £ judgment, but ho could not go with him the length he required as to anything being brought up there that had not been before the 3 Court in error. •

Mr Harper desired to cite the King v Waddington, 7 A. and 5., in support of his argument. His Honor said he was already of opinion that the prisoner was guilty of felony in forging an undertaking to deliver goods. Mr Harper said that the Court of Appeal in error had, by holding the two counts bad, put the description of the documents outside the clause making it felony. His Honor pointed out that the Court in error had only thrown out two counts, but had not expressed any opinion on the other four counts. They had said it was quite consistent that the document called a sale note was produced at the trial as a writing obligatory. Mr Harper again urged that he was in the same position as though the case had only just been heard, and therefore had a right to ask that the Court should consider the whole evidence, and could then take the point that the evidence did not support the indictment as laid. His Honor could do nothing of the kind. It might be true that had the point been raised at the trial he should have told the jury that the evidence did not support the indictment as laid. But now there were throe good counts remitted to the Court for judgment, and upon this he had to pats sentence. Mr Harper said that ho desired respectfully to submit that if the prisoner were sentenced under these counts he would be sentenced for what, though perhaps a moral offence, was not a statuteable one. His Honor could not for one moment admit this. Mr Harper submitted that, supposing the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth counts were the only ones left in the indictment, the document could not have been submitted in evidence. His Honor quite agreed with this—had it been done at the proper time. If at the trial the two first counts were omitted and the document put in, there was no doubt that it could not have been admitted; but this could not be done now. Mr Harper said that the prisoner ought only to have been punished for a misdemeanour, whilst he had been imprisoned on a charge of felony. The only course now open to him was to move the Crown to exercise its prerogative. His Honor said that of course Mr Harper could not expect the Court to give any recommendation. He might say that ho had given this case a most careful consideration, as one of the most peculiar he had come across in the course of his long experience. He had only to deal with the case as a matter of law, and that was that the judgment of the Court in October was erroneous, as being given as a general judgment, which had been reversed by the Court of Error. The reason of this was that two counts of the indictment were bad, as containing an averment that the document forged was a writing obligatory, whereas it was not. But the Court in Error bad remitted the case to that Court for a proper sentence on the counts remaining. He agreed with the learned counsel that had it appeared on the face of the counts that it was a common law forgery, instead of a felonious one, then no judgment would have been pronounced. He was, however, of opinion that the counts were good, and that the document set out was an undertaking to deliver judgment. Therefore there were four counts to give judgment upon. Had the matter been brought forward at the trial, then it might have been his duty to tell the jury that the indictment was not supported, but it was not ground for moving in arrest of judgment. He had, after considering the whole matter most carefully, come to the conclusion that it was his duty to pass sentence on the four remaining counts. The original sentence was four years’ penal servitude from Ist October, and now he should [pass the sentence of penal servitude on each of the counts concurrently, viz., three years and three months’ penal servitude, which would put the sentence exactly as it was on the original verdict. He desired to say, in conclusion, that the case, as one of very considerable importance, had been very carefully considered, and that the prisoner had nothing whatever to complain of, the point being taken some time after the trial. The prisoner was then removed. Mr Stringer appeared on behalf of the prosecution, but was not called on. FOEQEBT AMD GTXEEIN*. John Scott was indicted for having forged and uttered two cheques for £6 and £ls on the Bank of New Zealand, Lyttelton. The prisoner, who was undefended, pleaded “ Guilty.” His Honor, after remarking upon the sad nature of the case, and having to consign a respectable looking young man to prison, where there was every probability of his contamination, sentenced tho prisoner to two years' imprisonment with hard labor. Tho prosecutor, in one of the oases, Horatio Nelson, was called, and stated, in answer to hie Honor, that he never saw the prisoner before in his life, and did not know tho signature to the cheque. His Honor said he should certainly decline to allow the costs of this witness. If this was not temptation, he did not know what was. i'OBGEET AND UXTEEINQ. George Wood was indicted for having at Ashburton forged a cheque for £1 Is. The prisoner, who was undefended, pleaded “ Guilty.” His Honor, after hearing that the prisoner was well known to the police, and was already undergoing a sentence for passing valueless cheques, sentenced the prisoner to three years’ penal servitude. [Left sitting.]