Sentence Reduced In “Rescue Operation”

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31762, 20 August 1968, Page 24

Sentence Reduced In “Rescue Operation”

(New Zealand Press Association)

AUCKLAND, August 19.

Mr Justice Hardie Boys has reduced a prison sentence of three years imposed on a 40-year-old carpenter, Alexander Edward Carter, to 11 months.

Carter had been sentenced by Mr M- L. Morgan, S.M., on July 16, after pleading guilty to 23 charges of burglary and seven of theft, involving more than $16,000. On Carter’s appeal against sentence, his Honour said the case was an extraordinary one, and it would need to be

extraordinary before he would dream of interfering with a three-year sentence, for the offences, which bad been deliberately and needlessly committed over a period of 18 months. But he had concluded that the interests of the public in the right to have property protected must in part give way to the need to seek a means of achieving “a rescue operation” for Carter and his family of eight children. After the formal hearing of the appeal he had discussions with a psychiatrist as to the causes underlying Carter’s excursion into crime and how family therapy could be applied. It appeared the remedy involved the removal of recurrent depressions suffered by Carter, which had been relieved during the period of

his offences by the exhiliration and excitement of the burglaries themselves, the booty being a secondary consideration.

It also involved the willingness of husband and wife to submit to counselling and advice of psychiatrists.