BESTIALITY AND BRUTALITY

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 231, 4 February 1911, Page 5

BESTIALITY AND BRUTALITY

Tlffi HEAVIEST PUNISHMENT INFLICTED. By Telegraph.—Press Association. Wellington, Last Night. A middle-aged colored man ■ named Joseph Bannekea Edger, a music teacher, occupied the dock in the Supreme Court to-day in answer to a charge of a revolting nature. The Court was cleared by order of His Honor, Mr. Justice Chapman, and publication of the evidence was forbidden. The jury retired at 12.50 p.m., and returned at 2.45 p.m. with a verdict of guilty. The accused had nothing to say why sentence should not be passed upon him. His Honor, addressing the prisoner, said: "You have very properly been convicted. There can be no doubt whatever of the truth of the story of the girl. I tell you at once that if I had power to sentence you to imprisonment for life I would do it without hesitation. I have some doubt as to whether 1 ought not to inflict the punishment of the lash in addition to imprisonment. I abstain from doing so, as I intend to sentence you to the longest term this law allows. The crime you stand convicted of was accompanied by circumstances of brutality and bestiality such as I have seldom had the misfortune to listen to. I don't wish to say more than that. The sentence of the court is that you be imprisoned with hard labor for seven years, and this is to be followed by an additional ten years of reformative imprisonment in the terms of the statute passed last session." His Honor also thanked the jury for their attention to this as well as other disagreeable cases.