THE £3,000 CONSPIRACY CASE.

Marlborough Express, Volume IV, Issue 208, 18 December 1869, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE £3,000 CONSPIRACY CASE.

At the recent sitting of the Court of Appeal, the conviction of J. H Caton, for conspiracy to defraud was confirmed by the full Court, At the late criminal sittings of the Supreme Court in Christchurch, Caton was brought up for sentence, which Mr. Justice Gresson passed on him as follows: —Prisoner, John Henry Caton. 1 cannot, consistently with justice deal leniently with you. I think I am absolutely bound to pass a sentence which will mark my sense of the heniousness of your crime. You have not only been guilty of a very deliberate, carefully planned conspiracy to cheat the person who had been your partner, of a large sum of money, but you have also induced a person, who seems to have been more or less under your influence, to be a party to the crime that you have committed. You have brought him into a position similar to that in which you are placed It is quite impossible that I could be justified in passing over such conduct as this, by giving you a light or anything like a nominal sentence. I am not ready to to take into consideration the arguments which you have just urged as to your family, which of course could he urged in mitigation of sentence in the case of a great many prisoners in that dock. Whatever my private feelings may be, I cannot, as a judge, take those arguments into consideration. I am taking into consideration the fact that you have already been imprisoned for a considerable time. Taking that into consideration, the sentence of the Court is, that you be im-

prisoned in the common gaol at Lyttelton for three years, computed from the Ist of June last, and that you be kept at hard labor. The prisoner was then removed.