COURTS.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIV, Issue 9367, 9 February 1909, Page 5

COURTS.

Per Press Association. Auckland, February 8. At the Police Gourd this morning Andrew Brown was committed for trial on a charge of incest. Accused his wife and eight children were living in one room in Hobson street. At the Supreme Court, James Gates, aged 37, and William Gates, aged 30, were sentenced to twelve and six mouths respectively for breaking and entering and theft. Before the Supreme Court, Henry Philip Barry pleaded guilty to having stolen £BOO from H.M. Customs and was sentenced to eighteen months' imprisonment. At the Criminal sittings of the Supreme Court to-day a youth named Charles Stewart Leggie was brought up on two charges of theft from the Post Office at Coromandel. Counsel for the accused (Mr Earl) designated the affair as being something like a burlesque of crime. Leggie, a youth of bare>y 19, was employed in the Post Office, and had through sheer mental incapacity got his money accounts mixed, and had conceived the idea of having a burglary to clear the situation. He had, in fact, talked about this impending quite an open manner, and had discussed the probable results of it even with his chief, and then came the burglary itself, the loss of £39 odd, and the subsequent admission of the prisoner that he had put the money in a kerosene tin down in the garden. The prisoner had at all times been dull witted. He had been taken in as a letter carrier, and he had shortly afterwards been put in charge of a counter and was entrusted with the payment of old age pensions amounting to £320 a month. “He found himself sveeral pounds out in his accounts,’’argued Mr Earl, “and apparently the only way he saw out of it was the fantastic one of holding a burglary. ” His Honour considered the case before him was clearly so unusual and different from the average offence that he did not intend to send the prisoner to gaol. He would he convicted and ordered to appear for sentence when required, besides being called upon to pay the costs of the prosecution forthwith (£3 14s). Christchurch, February 8. The Supreme Court partly heard the case in which William James pleaded not guilty to a charge of having broken and entered a butcher’s shop at Addington and stolen a loin Of mutton. Richard Walter Walburton (60) was found guilty of the theft 'of clothing from the Oaversham Hotel and was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment, Auckland, February 9. At the Supreme Court, Arthur Gossett charged with the theft of £IBO from his employers, Heather, Robertson & Co., was sentenced to twelve months’ imprisonment. Auetin Dunbar, for horse stealing, received eight months; Thomas Pearce, for forgery and uttering at Aratapou, two years, and was declared a habitual offender.