SEVEN YEARS

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 7 August 1926, Page 9

SEVEN YEARS

SENTENCE ON SUTHERLAND

ATTEMPTED MURDER OF HIS

WIFE,

(BY TELEGRAPH PRESS ASSOCIATION.)

PALMERSTON N., Aug. 7

At the Supreme Court this morning Mr Justice Reid sentenced Ernest Tauiwba Sutherland to seven years’ hard labour on each of three charges of attempted murder and assault and causing bodily harm and arson, the terms to bo concurrent.

Counsel pleaded for leniency for the prisoner who, he said, had never previously shown any criminal tendencies. He was an educated Maori and had reached the rank of lieutenant in the flying Corps during the war: He was passionately fond of his wife and children, whom the wife left during the war, to tour with a theatrical company. Rows had developed since her return, and the wife had instituted separation proceedings, claiming custody of the children, whom Sutherland had been looking after, washing, feeding and dressing. The offences had been the result of an uncontrollable impulse, amounting to temporary insanity, and the prisoner had given himself up voluntarily to the police.

Ilis Honor said that counsel’s statements regarding home troubles were borne out by police reports, but he could not lose sight of the fact that Sutherland was lucky that his wife had not died, and he in not being charged with murder. His Honor said he would have to impose a substantial penalty.