SUPREME COURT

Hokitika Guardian, 4 February 1930, Page 6

SUPREME COURT

AUCKLAND SENTENCES

(Bv Telegraph—Press Association), AUCKLAND, Feb. 3.

Several prisoners were sentenced by Mr Justice Smith at the Supreme Court. Richard James Lanigan, aged —6, formerly a clerk in the Lands Department, was sentenced to eighteen months’ reformative detention for tueft of £2bt> while a Government servant. Counsel said that two years ago the prisoner's wife became ill, and, faced with the bills, he converted two large denomination stamps into cash and went on doing this. “While it is fairly clear ; hut prisoner is unlikely to offend again, ’’said His Honour, “I have a duty to the State, and therefore cannot grant probation, if I do, it wifi be an intimation to every State servant with dishonest tendencies that lici may take up to CoiO without fear of punishm.'iit. I take into' consideration, in lixmg the sentence, that the prisoner lias confessed of his own accord. ft appears jou iia\’o been engaged in gaa.blin t , and that was the cause of \ onr ni'p.i. ’ James Porter, aged 2b, a stable hand, was sentenced to three years’ reformative detenu.u for theft, ~nd breaking, entering and theft. Vise prisoner asked that the terms be hard labour, but the judge declined the request, stating that it would be in the prisoner’s interest that hti should undergo reformative detention. Stating that , lie had been unable to find any extenuating circumstances, the judge passed a sentence of three years’ imprisonment, with hard humour, on Owen Barber, agcid 45, farm labourer, for bigamy. “The circumstances of your association with this other woman amount to cold, calculating bigamy, for which there is no excuse,” he said. “Apart from that, you have inflicted a. grave and serious injustice upon a young woman.”

DUNEDIN OASES. .'DUNEDIN, Jan. 3. The quarterly qriminaj sitting of the Supreme Court commenced to-day before Mr Justice Kennedy. The Grand Jury returned no bill in the case of Claud Sutton Manners, charged with sheep stealing, accepting His Honor’s direction that the Cl’iinimd Court was not the place to settle ownership disputes when. tljere was no fraudulent intent.

George McGavin O’Kane pleaded not guilty to a charge of committing manslaughter by killing Stanley Omand at Roxburgh on November 30tli last, and of so acting while in charge of a motor ear that he caused the death of Omand. After evidence was partly heard for the Crown ease, the Court adjobrned.