LIFE SENTENCE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 308, 30 December 1933, Page 4 (Supplement)

LIFE SENTENCE.

GIRL OF NINETEEN. NEARLY A DOZEN FELONIES. JUDGE'S SEVERE STRICTURES. In a lengthy preface the pronouncement of sentence at Los Angeles, which Superior Judge Fletcher Bowron described as a warning to young criminals, a 19-year-old girl was committed to prison for a term of 30 years to life. The ilefendant, blonde Buvmah Adams, who, Judge Bowron tsuid, had the advantages of a good home, honest and respected parents, intelligence and a fair education, had been convicted of nearly a dozen felonies, including robbery and assault. In one of these crimes, a school teacher. Cora Withington, was brutally shot and blinded for life by the girl's husband, Thomas White, an ex-convict, whom she married only several months ago and who was slain when officers tracked him down in an apartment-house and cornered him. The girl, who hud driven his automobile, contended that he forced her to accompany him under threats of death.

Saying he could see no extenuating circumstances, the Court told the girl as she stood before the Bench:—"The only argument that can be advanced as an excuse for mitigating her punishment is her age. A few years ago it would have seemed a terrible thing to have sent a 19-year-old girl to the penitentiary. "But the time for maudlin sympathy toward young criminals is past. During the past decade there has been too inuch pampering of young persons who violate the law. We hear much about the enlightened treatment of criminal tendencies, where they develop early in life. But, despite reforms and reformers, or possibly because of them. %ve now have a younger generation growing into young manhood and young womanhood that evinces criminality to a far greater extent than ever before. "The number of young people who commit serious crimes is appalling. It is now an exception to have before the court a person of mature years charged with robbery, burglary nnd automobile theft. "These young criminals must be made to realise that if they commit serious crimes, thev must pay the penalty, and that thev will not be pett?d and pampered and told not to do it ngain and then sent on thfir way with no more punishment than kindly advice." Un'der the parole law the girl may be released on good behaviour in four years.