THE COURTS.

Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 17460, 22 May 1922, Page 3

THE COURTS.

• MAGISTERIAL SATURDAY. (Before Mr H. ¥. Widdowson, SJI.) i DRUJTKEKNESS. Jamea Robertson, aged 46 years, pleaded guilty to a charge of drunkenness, and not guilty to having cast offensive matter on the footpath. He was fined 10s, ih default 48 hours' imprisonment, on» the first charge, and 40s on the second. A charge of having disobeyed a maintenance order in respect cf his wife, was also preferred against accused, and he was remanded to appear at Wellington on Hay 23rd. REMANDED. • Alfred William Donaldson, aged 23 years, was fined 10s, in default 48 hours' imprisonment, for drunkenness. Hi was further charged with having stolen, on May 17th, an overcoat valued P.t £6, the property of Thomas CocVburn. He was xemandod to appear on Wednesday. Pierre Kugener, alias Peter Wilton, alias John Delaney, was charged with having disobeyed a maintenance order in respect of his wife, Louise Kugener. A remand was granted until to-morrow. •JUVENILE CASES. (Before Mr Wyvern Wilson, S.M.) A boy, aged 15 years, was charged with th© theft of a bicycle at Kaiapoi on April 16th. Two other boys, implicated in the theft, had previously been dealt with in the ordinary Court. This' case was adjourned for six months, and the boy was ordered to report to the Probation Officer once a fortnight during that period He was also ordered not to be out at night without the escort of an adult except when he attended night school.

]? THE POLLOCK CASE. SENTENCE OF EIGHTEEN MONTHS At the Wellington Supreme Court on Saturday, before Mr Justice Chapman, William Henry Pollock, the ex-amateur champion runner, came up for sentence for having stolen £9OO odd, the moneys of Nelson Moato and Co., by which company he had been employed in the position of secretary. His ctransel, Mr W. Perry, first called Dr, W. J. Hislop to givie evidence as to the severe illnesses suffered by prisoner's parents and the help prisoner had given them. In addressing the Bench, he stressed the point that prisoner was not a man in whom tiiiora was inherent vice, but was one who liad been led to misappropriate his employers' money as a result of long continued financial difficulties. Prisoner had got into debt through no fault cf his own. With his mother and father severely ill, prisoner had many responsibilities thrown upon him, and became the mainstay of the family. His parents were able to go to Hotorua for treatment through tho bounty of his father's former employer, but the treatment lasted longer than was anticipated, and the funds ran out. Pollock went to Rotorua and brought them back, and then found himself deeply in debt, and with what was almost an impossible task of overtaking his liabilities, and in March, 1915, began by taking a few pounds. By June the defalcations amounted* to about JGO, and that amount was slightly increased during the following year. He then borrowed £l2O from a friend to pay back the money ho had taken, promising to refund the loan by monthly instalments. That he found he could not do, and took mdre of his employers' money to catch up. When his parents died ho found himself faced with further expense, and then tooK to betting with the hope of making sufficient to repay all he had taken. The inevitable happened, email beta became larger, until a sum of £9OO went between September, 1921, and last March. Prisoner had given all assistance in clearing tho matter up. The Crown Prosecutor, Mr P. S. K.. Macassey, said there waß no doubt that prisoner had first got into debt through helping his parents, but once in the mire he had started plunging, with the result that tho defalcations rose rapidly, the total amount missing being £2741. His Honour expressed de£p regret to see a man with prisoner's general character before him, but said that he could not overlook thie fact that during the last seven years he had been relieving himself of the difficulties at the expense of his employers, arid had, moreover, falsified tho books in such a way that someone else might have been blamed an the event of discovery. The case which was. before the Court was perhaps of the most painful type which _ Judges, had to deal with, a class of case which was particularly difficult when there was no inherent vice in the prisoner. "Unfortunately, all over New Zealand the Judges have had to deal with cases of this kind," continued liis Honour, "cases of men otherwise of good character, taking their employers' money and falsifying books, and necessarily have regarded those cf cases as occasions for sentences of imprisonment. If I were to make a sharp distinction in ths case it would go round that I hr.d seen some cause to favour you. I cannot say this case is greatly different; but I can aep that it is a case for sentence not of the most severe type. The moat. eovero punishment upon you is probably the remorse you have suffered, and the fact that your .action has disqualified you from following such work again." Prisoner was then sentenced to eighteen months' imprisonment, with hard labour. SUPREME COURT' SENTENCES. (PRESS ASSOCIATION telegram.) WELLINGTON, May 20. In the Supreme Cmirt to-day Henry Alfred Marshall, for breaking, and entering, and theft at Dannevirke, was sentenced •to six years' imprisonment with hard labour,-and declared an habitual criminal; Norman Stewart Ward, breaking and entering and theft at Feilding, to two years' reformative treatment; William Marr, breaking and entering at Wellington, to six months'; Dart Moore, for theft from a dwelling at Waipukurau, to two years'; Alfred John Mills, for tlieft of jewellery and money, to six months.