SUPREME COURT Sentence reduced on appeal

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32879, 30 March 1972, Page 16

SUPREME COURT Sentence reduced on appeal

An appeal by Margaret I Priscilla Scott, aged 24, a housewife, against a sentence; of one year’s imprisonment I imposed in the Timaru Magistrate’s Court on a charge of assaulting Jacquelyn Elizabeth McLean with intent to injure, was allowed by Mr Justice Wilson in the Supreme Court yesterday. His Honour substituted a term of six months to be followed by one year’s probation. Mr J. E. Ryan, for the appellant, submitted that although the offence was a serious one, the term of imprisonment was excessive. The assault was committed in the heat of the moment. The complainant was a friend of the appellant and they continued to live together after the offence. Mr G. K. Pankhurst, for the Crown, said that this was the appellant's sixth conviction for assault, and the previous penalties imposed had not stopped her offending. His Honour said that the assault was a serious one. The appellant was in a semidrunken condition when she became involved in an argument at a party. When her friend tried to calm her down she lashed out with a knife inflicting quite serious cuts on the woman’s face near the eyes.

The main trouble with the appellant was that when she got liquor in her she went mad and no-one was safe around her. When she was sober she was well behaved. The appellant’s life was a tragedy. She came from a good home but both her marriages were unhappy and while her second husband was in ■prison she was living with another man. The two children of her first marriage were living with her parents. It was obvious that the Magistrate was right in saying that the appellant needed something in the nature of a shock sentence to bring her to the realisation of the position into which she had allowed herself to drift. “But I think that there was a better way of dealing with

flier than sending her to a Igaol for 12 months,” his Honour said.

He thought that a shorter ■ term of imprisonment followed by probation on special terms would be equally deterrent to the appellant and would offer a better hope for her recovery, said his Honour. During her term of probation the appellant was ordered to abstain from liquor, to live and work where directed by the probation officer and not to associate with persons disapproved of by the probation officer.