SOLDIER’S PLEA

Wairarapa Times-Age, 11 June 1940, Page 6

SOLDIER’S PLEA

BRINGS SHARP REBUKE FROM JUDGE. ACCUSED SENT TO GAOL. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON. This Day. “I would like to be given the chance to go overseas,” said Richard John Sowerby, who wore the uniform of the New Zealand army as he stood in tfie dock in the l Supreme Court 'for sentence on a charge of breaking, entering and theft at Hawera, also with a breach of a probation order made against him in the name of Leslie Murray.

The request brought a sharp rebuke from the Chief Justice, Sir Michael Myers. It made the case worse, not better, he told the prisoner, “because you had the opportunity to go and you deserted. You will have to be dealt •with in the ordinary way, unless you can convince the Defence authorities it is the proper thing for you to be sent overseas.

In reply to Sir Michael Myers, the Crown Prosecutor said the Defence authorities were waiting until Sowerby had been dealt with by the Court before dealing with him for being absent without leave. He should have gone with the Second Echelon but did not go and was later arrested in a wardrobe in a house at Hawera. On the charge of breaking, entering and theft, prisoner was sentenced to eighteen months’ reformative detention and for the breach of probation to nine months' imprisonment concurrent with the other charge.