SUPREME COURT CASES.

Taranaki Daily News, 16 August 1915, Page 5

SUPREME COURT CASES.

TOELLLNTGTON SESSIONS. PIAIX TALK FROM CHIEF JUSTICE. By Telegraph.—Press Association Wellington, Saturday. Letitia Jane Hood dime up for sentence at the Supreme Court to-day helion the Chief Justice (Sir Robert Stout), on a charge of having published a defamatory libel on a nun in the Wanganui Convent, knowing it to be false. His Honor said his duty was to see that the law was vindicated. Prisoner had tried to foment bad feeling among people who 'believed with her and people who did not believe with her. Prisoner had written lies, and he could not sentence her to less than six months' imprisonment. He would get the gaol surgeon ,to watch over prisoner and see what was the cause of the outburst thai had given her so much trouble.

The following, among other sentenocs, were passed:—J. ICirby, theft from person, nine months: George Penman, indecent assault on a little girl, two years; Thomas Alfred Suiter, indecent exposure, twelve months; Victor Vraser. assault and robbery, three years; Matthew 'Bell, carnal knowledge of n girl under sixteen at \\ Y est)K>rt, four years: Tempera Tokaitua, for marrying Europeans at Otaki and thereby committing a breach of the Marriage Act, admonished and discharged. In admitting two men named Cashman and Dempster to probation for two years for stealing goods from the wiiarf, the Chief Justice said working men 'ought to be saving every penny, instead of which they were drinking and smoking and going to pictures, and so nn. "I don't know what's coming io this country," he added. "I see young men loaflng about the streets thinking >">{ nothing but their own pleasures, and going into hotels in (he middle of s), great war, the greatest war the world has ever seen. The time will come when we will have to undergo very great, privations and you are makiag no provision for them. Even bees mid wasps make provision for their offspring, and you make no provision at all. You working men are no worse than other people."