FOUR YEARS IN GAOL

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22411, 26 May 1938, Page 7

FOUR YEARS IN GAOL

YOUTH WHO SHOT HIS FATHER

SENTENCE PASSED AT AUCKLAND

(PBESS ASSOCIATIOS TELEGRAM.) Auckland, May 25. A term of four years’ imprisonment was imposed by Mr Justice Fair in the Supreme Court on Francis Borgia Spensley, aged 19, who was found guilty by a jury recently of the man-' slaughter of his father by shooting him with a pea-rille on a faun at Swanson.

Before sentence was passed, Mr Allan Moody, for the accused, made a pies that justice be tempered with mercy. Because of his mode of life he had not the usual mental capacity, and committed the dreadful act under the stress of terror of physical punishment.

“The fact that the jury acquitted the accused of the graver charge shows their opinion that at the time he fired the shot he acted under provocation, which caused him .to lose his self-control and obey an impulse of the moment,” said his Honour. “There remains the fact that when he fired two shots he knew they were likely to cause his father’s death. Yet he fired not once, but twice.”

His Honour said that this was an act which the law and right-thinking people regarded as the gravest of offences. No one was entitled to take life except in self-defence, and the sanctity of life must be respected. What counsel had said would be taken into consideration. At the same time his Honour was not satisfied that ■'he conditions of the accused’s life were so difficult as some of the evidence indicated.

The accused was old enough to realise the gravity of his act, and his subsequent conduct showed no sign of remorse.

“I desire to make the sentence as lenient as possible,” said his Honour, “but it must be such that it will make it clear that the law is determined to mete out adequate punishment to those who take the lives of others.”