CONVICTIONS OF FIVE MEN

Press, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23352, 11 June 1941, Page 10

CONVICTIONS OF FIVE MEN

—* — ARGUMENT IN COURT OP APPEAL SAFETY REGULATIONS AND POLICE OFFENCES ACT (P.A.) WELLINGTON. June 10. The Court of Appeal was engaged this morning on hearing a case stated by the King against Ormond Edward Burton, David William Silverster, John Robert Hammerton, James Doherty, and John Whitely Boal, members of the Christian Pacifist Society, found guilty at the last Supreme Court session at Wellington on charges of conducting meetings prohibited under the provisions of the' Public Safety Emergency Regulations, 1940. The society decided to hold meetings in a Wellington public reserve, and the prisoners, on separate Friday evenings, persisted in continuing to address bystanders when called on to desist by the police. Each was brought on different dates before the Magistrate’s Court, charged under the Police Offences Act, with wilfully obstructing Superintendent Lopdell in the execution of his duty, and each was convicted and sentenced on this charge* to three months’- imprisonment. After verdicts of guilty in the Supreme Court, the Chief Justice (the Rt. Hon. Sir Michael Myers) raised a question for the opinion of the Court of Appeal as to whether in respect of each prisoner, the offence charged against him under the Police Offences Act and the offence charged under the Public Safety Emergency Regulations, were substantially the same offence. Argument was heard as to whether each prisoner can, or should, in the circumstances, be further punished in respect of the Supreme Court charge, and generally the position in respect of the" conviction of these prisoners now serving ; ■ their Magistrate’s Court sentences.