VILE CRIME

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 June 1943, Page 4

VILE CRIME

ATTACK ON BLIND & ELDERLY WOMAN MAN SENT TO GAOL FOR FIVE YEARS. OBSERVATIONS BY CHIEF JUSTICE. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. When sentencing Francis Ernest McLeod, who had pleaded guilty at Wanganui to a charge of attempted rape, to five years’ imprisonment with hard labour, the Chief Justice (Sir M. Myers), in the Supreme Court today, commented that it was one of the most shocking offences he had seen in about 50 years’ association with the administration of criminal law.

“Let me read to you,” he said, “what the law was until quite recently. Every one is liable to ten years’ imprisonment, with hard labour, and according to his age to be flogged or whipped once, twice or thrice, who attempts to commit rape or assaults any person with intent to commit rape, but on September 17, 1941, that law was altered. On that date Parliament passed an enactment abolishing corporal punishment. I have to administer the law as it is and I am not entitled to express an opinion as to whether the alteration made by Parliament was good or bad, wise or unwise. The law, as laid down by Parliament, must be assumed to express the will of the people, women as well as men. As far. as I am concerned, I must leave it at that, but you are in a different position. You are at liberty to rejoice in the reflection that the law shows much more tenderness and sympathy for you than you showed for the poor, unfortunate, elderly blind woman you almost throttled and then attempted to ravish. It is my bounden duty to impose a sentence that will not be light, but I doubt whether it is not lighter than you deserve.”