TO-DAY'S COURT.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVI, Issue 122, 21 November 1908, Page 5

TO-DAY'S COURT.

• — CRIMINAL SESSIONS. The criminal sessions of the Supremo Court were continued to-day, Mr,. Justice Cooper presiding. SENTENCED FOR FORGERY. A sentence of eighteen months' imprisonment, with hard labour was passed on George Leitch, alias Leech, who was found guilty of having forged a receipt for a money-order telegram. Prisoner, according to his own statement, is a young married man from Lancashire. The telegram in question had been sent to a miner from Blackball named Leitch, who had come to reside in Wellington. By making misrepresentations and signing the receipt in question, prisoner obtained £40. His Honour, in passing sentence, said that prisoner had been convicted of theft on two previous occasions. He was a man of dishonest inclinations, and his Honqur had no doubt that he succumbed to a temptation., BREAKING AND ENTERING. Breaking and entering the dwelling of Fred. Wilton, farmer, at Wilton's Bush, near Wadestown, and stealing a gold watch, three brooches, and a gold stud, was the nature of a charge preferred against a young man named Charles Reston. The foreman of the jury was Mr. Douglas Vincent Claridge. Mr. Myers appeared for the Crown, prisoner being undefended. Informant deposed that ho and his people left home at 12.5 p.m. on Bth October, and returned at 6.30 p.m. During their absence a window had been broken open, the house ransacked, and the valuables in question stolen. Witness, driving into town, saw accused on the road about twelve chains from the house Detective Lewis produced a japanned trinket-box belonging to Mrs. Wilton, showing a fingei'T mark. This box witness handed over io the Finger-print Department. John William Bryan, warder, Mount Eden Gaol, Auckland, produced prisoner's finger-print taken at Auckland m 1906. Detective Quartermain, of the Finger-print Department, said they had about 100,000 different prints. By a process of elimination they were able to classify all the prints. If the department had the prints of the fingers and two thumbs of a person it would be able to ascertain in two or three minutes from the 100,000 prints whether it had a corresponding print. In the present case the department only had a thumb-print on a trinket box to work from. It was brushed over with a mixture of mercury and French chalk and photographed.' In all probability it v.culd take the department four or five days to find the corresponding print in such a case as the present one. There were seventeen distinct characteristics on the impression taken from the box. Witness had no doubt whatever that the print was made by prisoner. No other pel son in the world could have made it. At 12.30 the jury returned a verdict of guilty. His Honour, in passing sentence, said that prisoner fdready had two convictions for breaking and entering. If he had another in addition to the present one ho would qualify for an indeterminate sentence. JTe would be sentenced on this occasion to two years imprisonment with hard labour. {Left sitting.)