NUMEROUS CHARGES

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 92, 20 April 1939, Page 5

NUMEROUS CHARGES

YOUTHS' OFFENCES

A BAD ASSOCIATION

The hearing of charges against Robert Clarence Clarke, alias Herbert Osward Jewett, a motor assembler, aged 21, and Robert Toombs, a tile stripper, aged 19, was continued in the Magistrate's Court yesterday afternoon. Clarke pleaded not guilty to a charge of unlawfully converting a car, at Wellington, on March 19, and was committed to the Supreme Court for trial. On a charge of escaping from lawful custody in the Rangipo prison, Tokaanu, about January 1, he pleaded guilty, and was committed to the Supreme Court for sentence.

Peter McGrath, superintendent at the Wellington prison, said that on September 5, 1938, an order was made for the detention of the accused in the Invercargill Borstal for a period of three years. On September 29 the accused unlawfully escaped, and was later dealt with at Invercargill and ordered to be detained for a further period of one year, the sentence to be cumulative. He also escaped from the institution on October 14, 1938, and was dealt with for that offence, being ordered to be detained for a year in the same institution. On account of his conduct and bad influence at Invercargill, he was transferred to Rangipo prison, where he was to serve a term of reformative detention not exceeding the unexpired residue of the five years' detention in the Borstal institution. On December 15, 1938, he escaped from Rangipo prison, and on December 19 he was brought before the Magistrate's Court at Tokaanu and sentenced to a year's hard labour as an incorrigible rogue, the sentence to commence at the expiration of the term of reformative detention. Up to January 1 last the accused was in lawful custody, but on that day he escaped by removing two boards from the top of his cell door. He was at liberty until arrested at Wellington on March 21.

Detective-Sergeant P. Doyle, prosecuting, said that there were a number of charges of theft against the accused, jointly, and against Clarke separately, and he- said that they might be disposed of, leaving the Supreme Court to deal with the men on the major charges. Some were committed by Clarke alone, and as soon as his association with the other youth commenced they had travelled the whole of the North Island committing offences of a serious nature. .

"Clarke," said Mr. Doyle, "after his escape ,from prison, committed several of these offences before he became associated with Toombs. Toombs is a native of Hamilton, and he had not been in trouble prior to his association with Clarke. Since they have been associated their activites have been particularly bad—breaking and entering and theft, various thefts, and unlawful conversion of motor-cars. Clarke is serving a sentence of six years, and I do not think that anything can be gained by adding to that. If six years does not reform him, I don't think anything your Worship can inflict can make any difference."

Clarke pleaded guilty to nine charges of theft, and both pleaded guilty, jointly, to eight more. Each of the accused was convicted and discharged in respect of the summary charges against him.