TWO MEN SENTENCED

Evening Post, Issue 47, 23 August 1935, Page 13

TWO MEN SENTENCED

BREAKING AND ENTERING

When Francis Xavier Toohill and William Campbell Wilson appeared for sentence before Mr. Justice Blair in the Supreme Court yesterday on- a charge of breaking, entering, and theft,, they attributed their lapse to drink. i

Wilson,, addressing the Court, said his Honour would, see by his record that drink had been the source of his trouble. When this offence'was committed he and Toohill were.the worse for drink.

Toohill said that the crime was quite unpremeditated. The very fact that he arrived from Auckland the day before ' would bear this out. In asking for leniency Toohill said that; although it was no excuse, he would like his Honour to take into account as a mitigating circumstance the fact that he was under the influence of liquor at the time the offence was committed.

Addressing Wilson,■ his Honour said that it was quite true that as far as he was concerned he had got a very long record, but there was this much about it, that about two-thirds of his convictions, of which there were twenty or thirty, were convictions for drunkenness or breaches of, prohibition orders. His Honour, after referring in detail to the prisoners record,, said that since 1933 he seemed-to-have been in and out of gaol all the time.

The prisoner said'that he was a sailor who had lost his means of .livelihood. He had always been in sail and never in steam. • ~

The difficulty as far as the police were concerned, :said his Honour, was that the prisoner 'either got drunk or stole. The prisoner was sixty-three years of age, and it was a very serious thing for him.. -

Wilson was, sentenced to imprisonment with hard labour for three years and declared an habitual criminal. His Honour said that Toohill also had a record which qualified him to be declared an habitual criminal, but in view of his age (25) he did not propose to make such an order. Toohill was sentenced to imprisonment with hard labour for three years.