Rape sentences reduced

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32450, 10 November 1970, Page 20

Rape sentences reduced

(N.Z. Press Association) WELLINGTON, Nov. 9. The Court of Appeal today dismissed appeals brought by Geoffrey Raymond Laird, Darryl William Davies and Brian Cyril Hoare against conviction in the Christchurch Supreme Court on September 10 this year on a charge of rape. But their sentences of five years imprisonment handed down by Mr Justice Wilson were each reduced to three years.

The Appeal Court substituted a verdict of attempted rape against Kenneth Sydney Johnson, who was appealing against conviction on a charge of rape, and his fiveyear prison sentence was also reduced to three years. The Court comprised Mr Justice North (presiding), Mr Justice Turner and Mr Justice Richmond.

Mr A. P. C. Tipping appeared for Laird, Mr L. G. Holder for Davies, Mr M. J. Glue for Hoare and Mr J. E. Butler for Johns. Mr P. G. S. Penlington appeared for the Crown. Mr Glue submitted that in imposing a sentence of five years imprisonment the judge had been swayed by emotional considerations. He submitted that the sentence

of five years each had been imposed as a deterrent, as there had been a failure to accept a warning given by Mr Justice Wilson in another rape case a few weeks before the present case came before the Supreme Court. Mr Butler submitted that insofar as his client was concerned the verdict of the jury was unreasonable and unsupported in law. In delivering the oral judgement of the Court, Sir Alfred North said there was no possible ground for considering the direction of the trial judge as inadequate. He said that in the case of Johns the Court was satisfied there was sufficient evidence of attempted rape, and in the circumstances the Court would substitute a verdict of attempted rape. Otherwise the appeals against conviction were dismissed. The judgment noted that the facts made very unpleasant reading, the girl concerned being a 17-year-old schoolgirl who went to a party with her boy friend. They took alcohol to the party, and she became grossly intoxicated. She quarrelled with her boy friend and became amorous under the influence of liquor. She was taken away from the party by four young men, three of whom had intercourse with her. The question was • whether she had" consented to intercourse or had been raped. The defence was that the men had been led to believe that she would consent, and in the case of Johns that he had not actually had intercourse.

On the question of sentence the Court said it drould always take a serious view of gang rapes, but there were two important factors in the present case. The girl had misbehaved badly at the party and the

men involved were younger than the soldiers concerned in the case before Mr Justice Wilson two weeks before the present case. In the circumstances the Court reduced the sentences imposed on Laird, Davies and Hoare to three years and, recognising that a verdict of attempted rape had been substituted in Johns’s case, the Court felt it had to differentiate between an attempted and the actual crime and so reduced the sentence imposed on Johns to three years.