SUPREME COURT

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LVI, 12 May 1925, Page 6

SUPREME COURT

(United Proas Association.) AUCKLAND. This Day. At the Supreme Court Air Justice Alpers sentenced"'Mark Webber for as sault- to 18 months’ prison ; Laurie Ormond McDermott. theft as a servant. two years probation and to refund £‘.55; John .Edward Ramsay and Chan Shieu Fong,'Two breaches of the Bankruptcy Act, to’come up for sentence if called upon, and on a third charge, three years’ probation ; Reginald Weymiss Askew, receiving stolen property, three months' gaol; Frank Potter, carnal knowledge of a girl under fifteen, three years’ hard labour; Robert Heaton Munro and Daniel Thomas Flynn, breaking and entering and theft, the former to five years’ hard labour and the latter to three years’ hard labour respectively.

“NOT A MAN'S PART” AUCKLAND, This Day. In sentencing Frank Potter to three years’ ifiarcTlabour for carnal knowledge of a girl under 15. Mr Justice Alpers said- “I hope the labour will be hard enough and the fare simple enough to cleanse the filth that courses through your veins for honest blood, and that when ’’you emerge from prison you will have learned that to defile a girl of 14 is not a man’s part.”

NOT A CASE FOR LENIENCY AUCKLAND, This Day. In, the charges against Munro and Flynn, counsel for accused asked for leniency owing to the assistance given by them in the recovery of the -stolen property. Air Justice Alpers remarked that £705 worth of stolen goods had never been found. The charges involved a series of bold, successful thefts. Munro had entered business establishments at Auckland and Wellington and stolen good® valued at £1213. To suggest that punishment should he light in a case like this was unthinkable. Shopkeepers had the right to expect the law would protect their goods. There had been systematic thieving. Punishment rtfust be severe. Munro would he sentenced to five years’ and Flynn to three/years’ imprisonment with hard labour.