Three Years Gaol for Customs Official

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 234, 22 December 1927, Page 1

Three Years Gaol for Customs Official

“DETERRENT SENTENCE” THEFT OF NEARLY £I,OOO William. Patrick Kelleher, aged 28, a Customs official, who pleaded guilty to 19 charges of stealing £939 9s 11d from the Customs Department, was sentenced at the Supreme Court to-day to three years', reformative detention by Mr. Justice Read. Mr. G. P. Finlay, who appeared for accused, saiji that there was difficulty in dealing with cases of men who had stolen while holding positions of trust. He knew that he could not ask for probation, but he asked the Court to bear in mind that in all thege cases the crime was its own punishment. He also suggested that once the first defalcation was made accused had to continue stealing to keep his original offenee covered.

His Honour: I don’t know how that can be so. Mr. Finlay: When he had taken the first amount, he had to keep back similar amounts, and as the sums became larger he had to take them all, BLACKMAIL ALLEGATION His Honour said that he could not believe the prisoner’s story that he had been blackmailed.- Had that been true, the prisoner’s obvious duty was to disclose the name of the blackmailer. The case was not one of a young man subject to close supervision, but instead that of an old employee in a position of trust. The man i had certainly been severely punished, but at the same time a heavy, deterrent sentence had to be inflicted.