YOUTH RELEASED

Grey River Argus, 22 September 1945, Page 3

YOUTH RELEASED

FROM SENTENCE FOR NEGLIGENT DRIVING

P.A. WELLINGTON, Sept. 21 The Court of Appeal to-day granted an appeal by Mervyn Raymond Flardv against a sentence of six months’ reformative detention, lor negligent driving causing bodily injury, imposed on him at Auckland in the” Supreme Court on September 13. The Court stated that it appeared that the accused had been seventeen years old when he came before Justices, and had given his age as eighteen. After the Supreme Court sentence, it had been discovered Uiat IS years was not correct. The' Court ot Appeal was of the opinion that a boy of that age should, as a general rule, not be sentenced to a term of imprisonment if that could be avoided. There were cases where it was necessary to inflict such punishment. This was not such a case. Sentence accordingly would be reduced to ten days’ reformative detention the effect of which is his immediate release. The cancellation of the prisoners’ drivers’ licence and prohibition of his securing another for three years is not to be disturbed. The Court said that any error, if it could be called such, was the fault of neither the Supreme Court nor of the Justices, but it originated in the boy’s own statement.