PART OF PUNISHMENT.

Taranaki Daily News, 20 April 1922, Page 3

PART OF PUNISHMENT.

NAMES OF OFFENDERS. The principles by which he would be guided in prohibiting or declining to prohibit the publication of an accused person’s name were stated by Mr. J. S. Evans, S.M., in the Magistrate’s Court in Wellington a few days ago. “Some difference,” said His Worship, “appears to exist among magistrates as to the administration of that part of our law which empowers a magistrate to order that a name shall not be published. The first poipt I want to emphasise is that it is our law. It is as much our law as any other part; and any man who is entitled to the benefit of that law has a right to apply to the Court to have it applied to his particular case. Whether there are sufficient grounds for giving the accused person that benefit is for the Court to determine, according to the circumstances of each individual case, and not by a hard-and-fast rule of thumb. “It has been stated by some magistrates that they will not apply this provision at all; by others that they will apply it only to persons under a. certain age. Other rules have been lahl down, a number of which appear to me neither legal nor logical. The view I take of this Act is that it is part of the statutes of our land, and must be applied as every other statute must be. “There are two things, and two things only, which should always guide the magistrate in administering that part of our law. One is, that publicity is part of the punishment for wrongdoing; the other is that the public are entitled as of right to have reasonable warning of a certain class of wrongdoers who may victimise the public in the manner set out in the particular charge. “So far as I can see, the public no other right to the publication of a name. It has no right as a matter for I local gossip or general scandal. Its right is to be protected, and it Iras no other right. Therefore, in applying this Act, I lay it down as the rule I intend to follow that I shall consider an application in every case in which it is made to me. I shall consider it on the facts of the ease, and I shall be guided by these two principles.”