FLOGGING SENTENCE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 11 June 1941, Page 5

FLOGGING SENTENCE

NOT YET CARRIED OUT. MEN WHO ATTACKED WARDERS AT MT. EDEN. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. “I will have to look into that matter,” said the Attorney-General, Mr Mason, when asked yesterday if the sentence of flogging imposed by Mr Justice Blair in the Supreme Court at Auckland on four prisoners, following assaults on warders, had been carried out. Two of them who appealed were Bryan James O’Hehir, aged 23, and John Henry Silva, aged 25, and a subsequent judgment of the Court of Appeal stated that the sentence of 12 years’ imprisonment and 20 strokes imposed on them was not excessive in view of the gravity of the offences.

In reply to a 1 further question, Mr Mason said that the sentence of flogging had not yet been'earried out, and he agreed that the law required it to be done within six months of sentence being passed. The men were sentenced at Auckland last February. Later, in the House of Representatives, Mr Endean (Opposition, Remuera) asked the Minister whether the sentence of flogging on certain prisoners for dangerous and vicious assaults on warders had been carried out. He recalled that the sentence had been confirmed by the Court of Appeal, and asked whether it was the intention of the Government to have it carried out.

“Any failure to carry out the sentence will mean the removal of a deterrent for others to commit a similar crime, and may affect the discipline in the goals of the Dominion,” Mr Endean added. „