Criminal Code Revised By New Legislation

Press, Volume C, Issue 29635, 4 October 1961, Page 15

Criminal Code Revised By New Legislation

(Ntw Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, October 3. . New Zealand would have one of the best criminal codes m the Commonwealth, and possibly in the world, if the new Crimes Bill was passed, the Attorney-General (Mr Hanan) said in the House of Representatives tonight.

“I believe the bill, as a whole, is a major reform of our criminal law, setting aside the issue of capital punishment,” he said. Mr Hanan was moving the bill’s second reading. The bill contains a complete revision Ji of the criminal code. It provides new penalties ' for some offences, removes anomalies in the existing law, creates new offences and drops some obsolete offences.

Dealinc with the new penalties in the bill, Mr Hanan said: “Xn revising the penalties in the existing law the aim was to bring them more into line with our sense of values. In particular there has been an attempt to achieve a better balance between the punishment for crimes against the person and crimes against property, and also to bring the various punishments more nearly into line- with one another. “In the existing law there are some anomalies that to our way of thinking can only be described as extraordinary. Thus to forge a bankrate can be punished in the case of a first offence by life imprisonment, whereas the maximum punishment for kidnapping a child is seven years.

“A parent who neglects a child so that its life is endangered or its health permanently injured can, in the worst case, be sent to prison’ for two years, while the miscreant who kills or injures a goat may be removed from society for 14 years. "To damage goods in process of manufacture is thought to be worthy of imprisonment for life, but the highest penalty that can be given for indecently assaulting a child is seven years’

“The Government followed the principles that the maximum punishment for any offence should be high enough to deal adequately with the worst case, bearing in mind that a persistent offender may receive preventive detention, and should also bear some relevance both to the relative social gravity of the act, and to the range of penalties actually imposed by the Courts.’’ Sexual Offences

"The need for very heavy penalties for sexual offences, especially against children, is well recognised by the present Government and this bill carries out the Government’s election policy that these penalties should be examined and where necessary increased,’’ Mr Hanan said. Car Conversion

’ The bill also increases the maximum penalty for car conversion from 2 to 7 years. This will cary out the Government’s election policy by bringing the penalty for this offence into line with that for theft. Car conversion is not theft, and cannot properly be made theft, because there is usually no intent to deprive the owner permanently of the car. However, a bad case of car conversion is as serious as a theft, and the law will give recognition to this,” Mr Hanan said, “A very important provi-

Sion of the bill is the clause which allows a person accused of murder to raise the new defence of diminished responsibility. This defence has existed in Scotland for more than 100 years and was introduced in England many years ago. “The jury cannot bring in a finding of diminished responsibility unless there is some medical evidence to support it If the defence suceeds there is to be a mandatory sentence of imprisonment during Her Majesty's pleasure. This is intended to allay any anxiety that dangerous persons, by pleading diminished responsibility, will be able to return at an early date to prey on the community.” “As the bill stands at present I think the clause is a wise and humane provision,” Mr Hanan said. Murder By Negligence “One result of the bill will be to do away with what has been called murder by negligence. The present act provides that it is murder if, among other things, the offender does any unlawful act that he knows or ought to have known to be likely to cause death and thereby kills anyone. "The unlawful object need not be very serious—it might be no more than a prank or involve a minor breach of the law —and I think most lay people would imagine that this sort of conduct might well be manslaughter, but would hardly be murder. “Yet the effect of the present law is that a person could be convicted of murder because he is thoughtless, because he does not observe the standard of care of the reasonable man. In future; these cases will be manslaughter and not murder. Anomalies Mr Hanan said another purpose of the bill was to clarify uncertainties and remove anomalies. "One anomaly is that a wife who assists her husband to escape arrest is protected from being charged as an accessory after the fact, but a husband who assists his

wife in the same circumstances has no defence. This is cured in the bill by putting both spouses on the same footing. ' “An instance where the law is uncertain is the power of the police in cases where they are entitled to arrest a persop without a warrant to enter premises to effect that arrest. A clause in the bill provides a short and, I believe, satisfactory code on the matter,” Mr Hanan said.

Mr Hanan said that under the bill attempted suicide will no longer be an offence. "For many years charges of attempted suicide have been brought almost solely to enable those unfortunate people who try to commit suicide to be taken and looked aifter. However, there are better means of doing this than- by convicting them of a criminal offence. and an amendment to the Health Act last year provided a procedure that does not involve what I might call the humanitarian misuse of the criminal law,” he said. New Crimes Mr Hanan said the bill created a number of new crimes and extended certain existing ones to deal with evils that had arisen since the Criminal Code Act was passed, or that were now regarded as more of a threat to society. “This, I think, is one of the most valuable features of the bill.

“Members will probably be as startled as I was to learn that there is now no power whatever in our law to deal with the kidnapping of anyone over 14, and that the maximum punishment for kidnapping a child under 14 is seven years’ imprisonment. A clause to the bill creates a separate crime of kidnapping punishable by 14 years’ imprisonment

“As the law stands, a confidence man who is shrewd enough to make his representations in the form of a promise instead of a representation of past or present fact escapes liability. Rights of Accused

Mr Hanan said that in framing the bill the overriding policy had been never to impair and, where practicable, to strengthen the rights of the accused. “At present, prior convictions within the previous five years for offences involving dishonesty are admissible in evidence to show that a person charged with receiving stolen goods had guilty knowledge. “Illis is a. striking exception to the ordinary rule that evidence of prior convictions cannot be given against an accused person,” he said. “It makes convictions for receiving much easier, but the Government felt it was altogether too likely to prejudice the accused. On the other hand, it is most important that receivers should be convicted.

Grand Jury Mr Hanan said one of the most important changes made by the bill was the abolition of the grand jury. ‘The grand jury has been an institution which has been part of our law almost since the foundation of New Zealand as a British colony, and we have remained faithful to it in spite of its abolition to England in 1933. I must admit I have had misgivings in the past, as I know some lawyers still have, about doing away with the grand jury.” he said. “My concern has always been that there should be some obviously independent authority to review charges against an accused committed for trial. The grand jury procedure is cumbersome and expensive, and if it can indeed be dispensed with without prejudicing the accused in any way, there is good reason for doing so,” Mr Hanan said.