REQUEST GRANTED

Evening Post, Volume CXIV, Issue 26, 30 July 1932, Page 14

REQUEST GRANTED

PRISONER'S SENTENCE

In view of the fact that already he had been in custody two months, Mr. Justice Reed, in the Supreme Court yesterday afternoon, reduced a sentence of 18 months he said he had proposed imposing on James, Walsh, and sentenced the prisoner to 16 months' imprisonment with hard labour. "I thank you Very much," said Walsn, airily, as he left the dock.

Walsh had been found guilty this week on charges of attempting to break and enter the chop o£ 'F. N. Spademan, a tailor, in Druids' Chambers. Woodward street, -with intent to commit theft and of being a rogue and a vagabond in that he was found unlawfully in an enclosed yard at the back of the premises. Reviewing the prisoner's record, his Honour .said that Walsh appeared to nave come straight out of gnol in Melbourne and transferred his attentions to the Dominion;

Counsel: "I think there was an interval of four months."

His' Honour, dryly: "As long as that, was .there?" (Laughter.) . ; ; . Counsel said there was evidence that when Walsh was arrested he was under the influence o£ liquor, nnd, in fact, had been dealt with in'the Magistrate's Court on■ '; charge o£ drunkenness. _ His Honour: "Jf h«.can do what he has in this case when he is. drunk, what will he do when he is'sober?" "■ ' After referring to tHe fact that Walsh had been in, gaol two months, counsel said .his final plea was,, at the prisoner's special request, for "a term o£ hard labour and not reformative detention. I His' Honour then passed: sentence. '