SUPREME COURT.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 61, 19 November 1907, Page 2

SUPREME COURT.

Per Press Association. Wellington, Monday. The criminal sessions of the Supreme Court opened to-day. The calendar consists of twenty-two cases against twenty-four persons. The Judge, "in cliargiug the Grand Jury, said a good many of the charges were from districts remote from Wellington. So far as the city and suburbs of Wellington were concerned, he said, there was nothing abnormal in the number of charges, though they were more numerous than he would have liked to see. The list ranges from a charge of attempted murder to one of profane language. Christchurch, Monday. At the criminal sittings there were seven charges against ten persons. Judge Chapman re/erred to the diminution of charges for sexual offences, and said he thought the promptitude with which they had been dealt with in the past was beginning lo .tell. 'MartffiTTSP mii, a young Maori woman witk thirty - - -seven convictions of theft, forgery, and false pretences, was declared a habitual criminal and sent to a reformatory. William Allison, on a charge of breaking and entering and attempted rape, was sentenced to five years. Leonard Burke, aged seventeen, a mentally defective, 011 a charge of burglary received three months' imprisonment. Wellington, Last Night. The jury found No Bill against Eric S. Ollerenshaw, charged with supplying a noxious drug. George Cowan, a middle-aged mau, charged with stealing £l3 from David Morgan at Feilding, was found guilty of simple larceny and remanded for sentence. Ernest Sigglekowas acquitted on a charge of entering a residence at Pahautanui and stealing ft gold watch and other articles. William James Webster, a middle-aged man, and a lad of seventeen named George' Dunlop, were charged with having been concerned in a number of housebreak"'S'. entering, and stealing cases at Uiniata, in the Taihape district. Webster pleaded guilty and Dunlop not guilty, .Webster admitted numerous previous convictions in Australia and p ea * an d> and His Honor sentenced webstcr to two years' imprisonment on each of the three charges, the sentences to be concurrent, but as for the last Wtten years prisoner had spent twothirds of his time in gaol, His Honor would declare him to be an habitual criminal, and order that he be detained in a reformatory prison after he had completed his two years' sentence. Dunlop was found not guilty. Christchurch, Last Night. At the criminal sessions to-day, a youth named William Frederick Bor- [ land was convicted of breaking and entering with intent to commit a crime but sentence was deferred till Wednes- ■ day. David Llewellyn Moore, who was charged with having discharged a shotgun at his wife with intent to du grievous bodily harm, was convicted of common assault and sentenced to three months' imprisonment. Edward Mills Joseph I,'rancis Donnelly, and Harry \\itte were convicted of assaulting and robbing William Walton, of Martinborough Wairarapa, during carnival «eek. Donnelly was sentenced to three years imprisonment and the other two to two years each.