An Extraordinary Sentence.

Evening Star, Issue 7345, 18 October 1887, Page 3

An Extraordinary Sentence .

TWO YEABB' HAED LABOR POB A 21s OVKB- .''.". CHARGE. A curious example of capricious seventy on the Bench is supplied from Adelaide. Burford, a carter in the service of the South Australian Government, employed on one of the Far North telegraph stations, was prosecuted for having inflated his travelling expenses to the amount of 21s. He added small sums to the amounts reported to' be paid for travelling expenses, until the dishonest excess reached 21s. The culprit was duly prosecuted for obtaining money under false pretences, and pleaded guilty, and the Postmaster-General (Mr Todd) went into the box and gave emphatic testimony to the general excellency of the accused man's character. Chief Justice Way, who tried the case, said that, in copsideration of the terrible punishment the prisoner had already endured in loss of employment and wreck of character, he would pass " a comparatively light sentence " upon him; and then sentenced him to two years' imprisonment, with hard labor! It was the man's first offence, and he had a wife and eight children dependent upon him. The wife was in Court herself, broken in health with the toil and anxiety of nursing her eight young childrenprosIrated with typhoid fever in a distant bufch home. On hearing her husband's sentence she gave way to viohnt hysterics, her shrieks ringing through the Court. The scene was the most distressing one ever witnessed in the Court. Sir Alfred Stephen, the venerable ex-Chief Justice of New South Wales, who had a seat on the Bench beside Chief Justice Way, had to leave the Court, visibly affected and distressed. If this is Chief Justice Way's conception of a " comparatively light sentence," it would be interesting to learn what he regards as severity. But the eccentricity of judicial sentences is strikingly illustrated by some of Mr Justice Way's other performances during the same session. Thus, a wellknown and oft-convicted burglar, found guilty of breaking into a house, was se-i----tenccd to eighteen months' imprisonment. A p.-honor convictad of forgery, who had already served more than one sentence, was condemned to two yeais' imprisonment. On the previous day two burglars, whose performances were so outrageous that they were liable to cumulative terms of imprisonment amounting in. all to sixty years, were let off with five years' imprisonment each. A previously respectable man who embezzles a guinea from the Government is thus, according to Mr Justice Way, worse than an inveterate forger or a notorious burglar who has just come out of prison "for on© crime and is caught in the act of committing another ! Such capaciousness on the patt of a Judge is enough to profoundly shock public feeling. Public sentiment in Adelaide seems to have been sharply pricked by this case, and the whole matter was debated in Parliament. Mr Rees, who moved the adjournment of the House for the purpose ot debating the incident, gave some extraordinary examples of absurd sentences. "He saw that another poor wretch who had been twenty-six hours without food, and who had stolen three cakes valued at threepence, was sentenced to three years' imprisonment ; while another man, under similar circumstances, was sentenced to three years' imprisonment for a like offence ; and yet a well-known forger who had been living by his wits for years escaped with a more lenient sentence." It is not to the credit of the good people of Adelaide that the shock to public feeling created by this incident has been allowed to exhaust itself without any practical gain to the particular prisoner thus absurdly over-punished. The Adelaide case illustrates afresh the leaven of brutal heathenism still lingering in our laws, which makes our Judges smite offences against property with tenfold greater severity than sins against the person. A man convicted of shameful cruelty to a dumb animal is fined 20s; a drunken ruffian who beats bis wife to a jelly is bound over to keep the peace for six months,- a scoundrel who indecently assaults a child is sentenced to twelve months' imprisonment; but a previously respectable man.who pleads guilty to embezzling 21s from the Government, is sentenced to two years' imprisonment with hard labor. That embezzled guinea, in the scales of the law, represents a much more heinous offence than a battered wife or an outraged child !--' Telegraph.'