MRS. DRAKE'S SENTENCE. A Deterrent to Cruelty.

Free Lance, Volume III, Issue 128, 13 December 1902, Page 8

MRS. DRAKE'S SENTENCE. A Deterrent to Cruelty.

THERE was a slight sensation in the Court, on Tuesday last, when Mr Justice Edwnrds awarded Mrs. Drake, a woman convicted of the manslaughter of her own child, a sentence of six years' hard labour. Always, when women have been guilty of grave crimes, the people have been disposed to regard them with more Lenity than th' 3 ordinary male person. That His Honor was fully alive to the deterrent effect the exemplary sentence on Mrs. Drake will probably exercise, there is no doubt, and that Mrs. Drake deserves to the full the sentence imposed is unquestionable. ♦ » • Defendant's counsel deftly suggested that to a person in good circumstances the ignominy of her position, the loss of a child, and separation from her husband, constituted a burden that was already too great for her to bear. He suggested, too, that her position, being above that of the class of person ordinarily likely to be guilty of the crime of manslaughter, she should receive lesser punishment than should be meted out to such an one. As Eis Honor, however, very aptly pointed out, there is in New Zealand one law only for the rich and poor a^ike. To have made the sentence one whit lighter because of defendant's social position, or because she had been carefully educated, or was finely strung, or highly intellectual, would have been, to violate natural right and justice. It is the boast of British jurisprudence that the law is no respecter of peirsons. « « • The rich criminal has a better chance than his poorer neighbour, anyway. He is able to employ nigh-priced counsel,

and to leave no stone unturned to endeavour to establish his innocence. Any resultant sentence is harder an. the rioh man), because his hopes of winning his case have been dashed to the ground. If any distinction wexe permitted, he oughft to be punished mare severely im proportion than tihe poor man, for bis higher education, and the fact that it is unnecessary for him to commit crimes from siordid monetary motives. • • • It is an axiom in older countries that there is one law for the rich, anld another for the poor. It is not true, except in so far ,as the rioh are able to pay to work points impossible to the poor suspected criminal. While it is impossible to avoid sorrowing that a woman who made this one great lapse, and who has already been dreadfully punished if her feelings 1 are as sensitive as counsel suggested, tihe> average person will endeavour to sink his pity for her in the reflection, that the example which has been set may act as a wholesome deterrent to others. • » * New Zealand is, fortunately, free from very frequent instances of great crimes, and the object of all punishment is to deter people from giving way to crane. We do not want to maike criminals of people who are not born, with the criminal taint, and we do not want, on the other hand, to serve out justice in kid gloves. Mrs. Drake had no intention of committing the unnatural crime for which she is now suffering. She was' no criminal by b^rtih or training. The result, however, was, unhappily, the same. • • • Counsel, by the way, referred to the pang that would be inflicted on the prisoner by an association with women of the criminal class. Women of the "criminal class" may mean women, of brutal temperament, who have committed any crime with the possible exception, of the supreme one of taking life. Why should there be any difference of domicile when all are convicted, and the richest, th© best-eduoated, may be the worst offender of them all? Judge Edwards has clearly shown that, in his court (and there is no reason to doubt also in every other court in New Zealand), there is absolutely only one law, and that its punishments are impartial, without exceptions. * ♦ • It is education that refines, and that should eliminate our baser feelings. The person who, being refined and educate ed, forgets himself, and lapses into crime, is guilty in a higher degree than his ignorant brother. There should be no sickly sentimentality about awarding him a punishment consistent with his crime, and irrespective of his condition in life.