DELIBERATE ACT

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 698, 25 June 1929, Page 1

DELIBERATE ACT

UTTERING FORGED CHEQUE TERM OF IMPRISONMENT “It was a deliberate act and not. one of an impulsive nature committed when you were not in full possession of your faculties through drink.” In these terms Mr. Justice Kennedy sentenced Leonard Walter Lash to IS months’ reformative detention for uttering a forged chegue at Morrinsville. Lash pleaded that he did not remember handling the cheque. He had had a few drinks that day—the first time in his life he had taken liquor—and could not account for his actions. The cheque was wrongly dated when Lash first presented it, stated the Crown Prosecutor, Mr. V. R. Meredith. There was no suggestion that liquor was responsible for his act. “The uttering of a forged cheque—though the amount involved is not large—often occasions hardship on poor people,” remarked his Honour, in passing sentence. “You are already serving three months for theft and you have been in gaol twice previously for failure to maintain your wife. You say the crime was committed under the influence of drink, but the depositions show that you proceeded in a calculating way. Although you had the opportunity of withdrawing the cheque you did not desist, but continued in your crime.” The 18 months' reformative detention is to be concurrent with the present sentence.