‘Reformed criminal given a chance’

Press, 17 June 1982, Page 4

‘Reformed criminal given a chance’

A man with an “appalling" list of convictions, who drove the getaway car for two burglaries in Lyttelton in December, 1980, was now a reformed character, Mr Justice Casey was told in the High Court yesterday. Eru Lucian Hall, aged 30, was sentenced to six months periodic detention on charges of burglary of Leslie’s Bookshop in London Street, Lyttelton, and the next door shop of Collets Chemists from which a quantity of drugs was stolen. The police statement said that a Zephyr car was unlawfully taken from Southampton Street in the early hours of December 8, 1980. Hall was picked Up by tw T o persons in Cathedral Square and they drove to Lyttelton.

The front door of the bookshop was broken open and a hole smashed in an interior wall to get into the chemist shop. Hall said that he drove the car around the streets while the burglaries were being carried out. A police sergeant saw two persons run from the chemist shop and jump into the passengers’ seats of the Zephyr which was parked in a nearby street. The car was driven at high speed through the tunnel towards Christchurch and around the streets of Opawa and Linwood until it crashed into a fence at the corner of Kerrs and Pages roads.

Three persons leapt from the vehicle and ran off. A police dog followed a trail and found Hall hiding in a nearby property. The other two persons were never found. Mr M. J. Glue, for Hall, said that his client's conduct since he absconded while on bail and fled to Auckland had been exemplary. “One could be cynical and say that he was lying low, but when his previous spate of offending was considered it was a matter of great importance,” Mr Glue said.

After accumulating an appalling list of convictions in Christchurch, Hall had changed his lifestyle completely on going to Auckland. He had given up drugs, got a job under an assumed name and became such an industri- < ous. reliable worker, that he was soon promoted.

Hall settled down in a stable domestic relationship with a girl who was carrying his child and had shown an interest in religion.

Hall’s world was then shattered when he was suddenly arrested, not because he was involved in another crime as was so often the case, but because he was spotted by a vigilant Christchurch detective who was in Auckland and knew Hall was on the run.

The Court was often told of confirmed criminals who had a sudden change of heart and had reformed and it was understandable that such tales should be treated with a certain amount of cynicism.

“But I make these submissions with some knowledge of Hall, having acted for him when' he was becoming something of a legend because of his regular court appearances in Christchurch,” Mr Glue said.

“I believe we are dealing with a man appearing for sentence on burglaries committed some time ago during a previous way of life but who has seen the error of his ways and changed of his own volition,” Mr Glue said. Mr Glue asked the Court to treat Hall as a calculated risk and impose a non-custo-dial sentence.

Mr G. K. Panckhurst, for the Crown, said that he could not oppose Mr Glue’s application because it appeared that Hall had finally reached the turning point.

His Honour said that the normal penalty for breaking into a chemist shop and stealing drugs was imprisonment.

. “Looking at the appalling list of convictions you have built up I am to take the exceptional course of granting Mr Glue’s request that’you be given a commun-ity-based sentence instead of being sent back to prison which you richly' deserve," said his Honour.

Extraordinary as it might seem Hall had settled down for the first time in his life and succeeded in his new employment after skipping on bail while awaiting sentence and starting a new life in Auckland under an assumed name.

“You have taken up a stable relationship with a woman who is- expecting your child, and it may well be if the detective hadn't fortuitously run into you there the courts would never have seen or heard of you again," his Honour said. He was fortified in what he was doing because his experience at the Penal Policy Review Committee was that prisons were fairly full of young people between the ages of 18 and 28, and generally it seemed to bethat after that time persons who had embarked on a career of crime tended to reform and settle down.

They tended to form a proper domestic relationship, mature, and that was the last prisons saw of them, and he thought that that might be the case with Hall.

“I am going to give you the chance Mr Glue has asked me to but it is a last chance in the hope that you will be able to make something of your life,” his Honour said. “I have done it as much for the child that is expected and your de facto wife who has done a sterling effort to change you. But keep away from your former criminal associates. That is the only thing that worries me, that in returning to Christchurch you will throw away this chance.”