Supreme Court Two Appeals Allowed, Four Dismissed; Sentence Varied

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30103, 10 April 1963, Page 11

Supreme Court Two Appeals Allowed, Four Dismissed; Sentence Varied

Mr Justice Wilson allowed two criminal appeals in the Supreme Court yesterday, dis* missed four, and varied one man's sentence. The man whose sentence was varied is Robert Owen Benjamin Haskett, aged 29 (Mr G. W. Rountree), who appealed against a sentence of 12 montte’ gaol for burglary and theft. His Honour said it was a serious matter which showed some dqpee of planning. But it seemed that Haskett would be unable to conceive a plan and carry out offences on his own initiative. He appeared to be a weak rather than a bad character, and the sentence would be changed to one of corrective training (up to three years fa prison). His Honour allowed an appeal by Ivan Tapp, aged 45 (Mr R. G. Blunt), against conviction and sentence of two years’ gaol for stealing a watch, wallet, and other goods from an Australian girl’s roorh fa a Christchurch hotel. The only evidence of Tapp’s being in the girt's room was that he was there with her after the thefts had taken place, his Honour said, and the case therefore rested on the fact that the wallet was found in Tapp’s room under his compactum, and the fact that he had an opportunity to commit the crime. There was a strong case of suspicion against him, but there was still a reasonable possibility that the theft might have been committed by someone else. The conviction and sentence were quashed. An appeal by Michael James Griffin, aged 20 (Mr B. J Drake), against conviction and sentence of Borstal training for car conversion was allowed. His Honour said the evidence regarding the gloves left behind by the offender was favourable to Griffin if anything. There was no evidence that they were his. The course followed by the offender as indicated by the police dog Buck was not the same as that described by the owner of the car. The complainant had identified Griffin on the strength of seeing him in the interior light of the car, under his house porch light and in the car’s headlamps. But he took eight minutes to select Griffin’s picture from eight others shown to him by the police. This seemed rather a tong time. At the identification parade the complainant might have identified the original of the picture he had seen earlier, rather than the actual offender, his Honour said. He did not accept the evidence of identification as so strong as to give the lie to Griffin’s alibi that he was in bed at the time. Although he was not wholly satisfied that the evidence of the alibi was true, it might be. He could not feel satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that guilt was established.

Dismissing an appeal by Colin Wayne Greenbank, aged 20, his Honour said that if he had been disposed to vary the 12 months’ —ison sentence for car conversion it would have been by way of increasing it. Greenbank said he was appealing on compassionate

grounds, because his child was only three weeks old when he was sentenced. “I am truly repentant and would like a chance of a suspended sentence,” he said. Mr C. M. Roper, for the Crown, said Greenbank's repentance had come a little late. Greenbank's wife had actually been in the maternity home having her baby on the night when Greenbank committed the offences. His Honour dismissed an appeal by William Alfred Symons against a sentence of 12 months’ gaol for being in posession of housebreaking instruments. Symons told the Court that the gelignite and detonators had been in his car which he used for burglaries, but he had no intention of using them. They had been there for some months.

His Honour pointed out that gelignite could detonate by deterioration and that tt was not the sort of stuff that people liked to carry around. “I wasn’t interested in it,” said Symons. “I'd have been very interested in getting rid of it,”

said his Honour. He said Symons was still on parole for a previous offence of the same kind when be committed this one. Although he was impressed by Symons’s candour, the offence was a serious one.

Clifford Boyd Ogilvie’s appeal against conviction and sentence for stealing a suitcase full of jewellery at Dunedin on September 8 last year was dismissed. His Honour also dismissed an appeal by Melvin John Tipa against sentence of 27 months* gaol for theft, fraud, and burglary in Dunedin. Mr Roper said that Tipa made reference to the fact that his accomplice was sentenced to only one year’s probation. The fact was that the accomplice was the young woman with whom Tipa was living, and she had played a relatively small part in the burglary of their neighbour’s house.