JEWELLER'S OFFENCE

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 25, 29 July 1933, Page 12

JEWELLER'S OFFENCE

BOUGHT STOLEN RING

"KNEW WHAT HE WAS DOING"

Twelve months' reformative detention was the sentence passed by Mr. Justice Heed in the Supreme Court today on Victor Brownson, a jeweller, aged 40, who was found guilty on Thursday by a jury on a charge of receiving a stolen diamond ring. His Honour said he could not deal leniently with the case.

Mr. W. E. Leicester, counsel for Brownson, said that he approached his Honour with a certain sense of despondency. The report of the probation officer was not favourable, nor was the report from the police*, of the most favourable character. Counsel said it had occurred to him since the trial that he might have been in a better position in addressing the Court if Brownson, as he was prepared, to do, had given evidence. He believed that had Brownson given evidence it would have been sliown that, far from his being a. cunning receiver, he was an excitable, irresponsible, and irrational man rather than a criminal. Although the police did not speak very well of the prisoner, counsel said he had been given to understand by people ■who had approached him since the trial that Brownson was good-hearted and that he had often helped a lame dog over the stile. He asked the Court to consider the imposition of a fine and strict probation, rather than imprisonment. DELIBERATE ACTIONS. Addressing Brownson, his Honour said he had listened to the case very carefully and he had Come to the same conclusion as the jury. It appeared to him to be a case of a most deliberate attempt by the prisoner to conceal the fact that he had purchased the ring, knowing it to have been dishonestly obtained. The fact that he did not enter it up in the secondhand dealer's book was in itself a very wrong thing, and certainly cast suspicion over the whole case. He could not accept the suggestion that the prisoner thought it was a new ring and that he was entitled to abstain from entering up the purchase. Then again, he had told tho police deliberate falsehoods, alleging that he had made no purchase except from jewellers, which showed that he was keenly alive to what he was doing. It was of the greatest importance that second-hand dealers should carefully enter up their transactions in connection with goods they purchased. Licences were only granted to persons of good character. Brownson had not been granted a licence. His Honour said that the report he had before him, which he had no doubt was true, stated. that a second-hand dealer's licence had been refused the prisoner in 1932. The licence apparently was granted to the young woman assistant he had in the shop. His Honour said he could not help thinking that the suspicions attaching to the prisoner's character at that time were justified by his actions in this case. He could not deal with the case leniently. _^^_____