FOUR PRISONERS SENTENCED

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22460, 22 July 1938, Page 10

FOUR PRISONERS SENTENCED

+ FARMER FINED FOR THEFT OF CATTLE GAOL FOR ASSAULT WITH INTENT TO ROB (FBiaa AIIOCIATIO» TELBOftAIf.) HAMILTON, July 21. Four prisoners were sentenced by Mr Justice Reed in the Supreme Court. Hamilton, this afternoon.

Aubrey Canroy Brough, aged 27, a farmer, who was found guilty on two charges of theft of cattle at Aria, near Te Kuiti, was fined £SO, in default six months' imprisonment on the first charge, and on the other was convicted and discharged. John Francis O'Keefe, aged 58, a labourer, of Frankton, was sentenced to 18 months' imprisonment with hard labour for assault with intent to rob. His Honour said that prisoner was already an habitual criminal on licence. Leonard Frank Haynes, aged 30 years, a labourer and miner, of Te Awamutu, and Walter Leonard Cooper, aged 38, a labourer of Te Awamutu, both *of whom pleaded guilty in the Magistrate's Court, Hamilton, last week to breaking and entering a shop at Futaruru, and also the Frankton School, appeared for sentence. Haynes was sentenced to 12 months' reformative detention on each charge, the sentences to be concurrent. Cooper was sentenced to 18 months' imprisonment with hard labour, and in addition was declared an habitual criminal. . In commenting on the cattle-stealing case, his Honour impressed on the public the gravity of cattle stealing, stating that thev were not entitled to drive unbranded cattle from the bush and claim them as their own. Cases of this nature ware usually punished by a term of imprisonment, and the fact that the defendant was merely fined did not indicate that similar measures would be taken against other offenders.