STOLE FROM STORES

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 644, 22 April 1929, Page 1

STOLE FROM STORES

MAORI SENTENCED TWO YEARS IN GAOL For five months of last year Wiremu Tepana, 24, a Maori, of Rawene, North Auckland, embarked on a career of crime. A sentence of two years’ reformative detention was imposed on him by Mr. Justice Kennedy at the Supreme Court this morning, when he came up for sentence. He was represented by Mr. J. J. Butler. Tepana had been found guilty on six charges of breaking and entering with intent to commit a crime. He was a married man with three children and had been carting timber for a .European who did not pay him, thus leaving him destitute. His Honour said the crimes had extended from June to November, 1928, and asked if the suggestion was that wages v'ere unpaid over the whole of that period. Counsel said this was not the case, but the prisoner bore an excellent reputation as a "worker and was a nondrinker. Each charge was serious, said his Honour. The crimes had been committed at intervals of about a month and there must have been few shops within his reach that he did not break into. He may have been pressed by circumstances to commit the first crime, but he had continued without being urged by any such consideration. His character was in his favour, but the probation officer had not recommended probation and his Honour said he could not grant it to enable prisoner to return to his wife and children. The case was difficult, but if the prisoner show*ed signs of reformation the Prisons Board could review it later. Sentencing Tepana to two years’ reformative detention on each charge the sentences to be concurrent, liis Honour made an order for the return of the stolen property, which was now in tb» hands of the police.