TWO YEARS’ HARD LABOUR

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 26 November 1927, Page 4

TWO YEARS’ HARD LABOUR

SENTENCE ON A. M. CONROY

ONE MONTH ON SUICIDE CHARGE

At the Supreme Court at New Plymouth this morning, Mr Justice Ost.ei sentenced Albert Morgan Conroy to two years’ imprisonment with hard laoout on six changes of indecent assault and to one month's imprisonment on a charge of attempted suicide, the .sentences to be concurrent.

In passing sentence, his Honour ©aid he had given the case careful and anxious thought. If he could feel that up to the time of the offences, the prisoner had been a reputable citizen and had done nothing wrong until a certain physical development had asserted itself, h© would have considered the ad visabi.litv of holding over sentence, and giving ihim a chance of _ undergoing treatment. The medical evidence showid that his conduct _ was the result of a physical abnormality which haul reacted on the prisoner’s mind. This was clear from his own admission' to the nolice that he had been abnormal for some time.

Such acts were made ai crime because of the injury they did to others and for the protection of the community. This was not the case of a physical breakdown of a normal man, and justice demanded that the: prisoner should bo put a.wa.v for a good term. He then passed sentence ats recorded above.