SENT TO GAOL.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 75, 30 March 1939, Page 13

SENT TO GAOL.

THREE PRISONERS. PLEA OF AN ESCAPEE. SUPREME COURT SENTENCES. "He perpetrated a melodramatic escape from gaol, got to Wellington and was at large for a considerable time. If he had not escaped he would not have had to be dealt with on two conversions of cars, and consequently I cannot make the sentences concurrent." So Mr. Justice Call an explained to Raymond Patrick Letton (33), who had pleaded guilty in the Supreme Court to-day to escape from lawful custody and two charges of unlawful conversion of motor care. "I must make it clear," added hie Honor, that in this court the person who gets into the clutches of the law will be neither rewarded nor admired if he escapee from custody. He will only get extra punishment." Mr. Noble made a plea in mitigation that drink wae the prisoner's besetting sin which got hini into trouble, and that ordinarily the man was a good and reliable worker. The prisoner added on his own behalf that one of the cars had been taken from the street by someone else. "Yes, but you took it and used it ae your own, knowing it to have been converted, and then had an accident which resulted in your discovery," replied his Honor. The prisoner was sentenced to six months' hard labour on each of the three charges of escape from custody and conversion of two cars. UNION TRUST BETRAYED. A plea for probation was made by Mr. Rattray on behalf of Stanley Horace James, labourer, aged 45 years, who had admitted theft of £131 belonging to the Auckland Metal Workers and Assistants' Union, when a servant of the Union. Counsel stressed the fact that there was nothing previously against the prisoner, whose lapse had arisen from a personal ambition to advance himself by association with persons of a higher status, and from living beyond his means. His Honor said that the law regarded very seriously breaches of trust by a servant. It was the old story of prisoner. expecting to be able to pay back the money, but after such breaches of trust the Court could not consider extending probation. Prisoner would be sentenced to twelve months' hard labour on each charge, the sentences to be concurrent. A SHARP LESSON. "This young man seems to have settled into crime and must get a short, sharp lesson," said his Honor of George Ivan Burlace, a farm labourer, aged 24 years, who had admitted two charges of theft and of forgery in the Hamilton district. The prisoner was not represented by counsel and had nothing to say for himself, and his Honor said that he would assume that in the circumstances there had been a plea made for probation. He could not, however, heed any such plea, and thought it in the prisoner's best interest to sentence him to 12 months' hard labour.