CONVERSION OF MOTOR CAR

Hawera Star, Volume LIII, 27 September 1933, Page 5

CONVERSION OF MOTOR CAR

TWO MONTH’S IMPRISONMENT

SENTENCE AT NEW PLYMUTH. A sentence of two months’ imprisonment for the conversion of a car, the property of Andrew Ohrystal, was imposed on Harry Lewis Brennan by Mr W. H. Woodward, S.M., m the New Plymouth Magistrate’s Court yesterday". Brennan, who was remanded on Monday for sentence, pleaded guilty to removing; the car from Eltham on Saturday morning. A charge of stealing two gallons of benzine was dismissed.

Detective Meiklejohn referred to the statement of Brennan’s counsel on the previous day that this was the first offence of dishonesty in which he had been concerned. Mr Meiklejohn had gono further into the police history of Brennan and had found in 1923 he was convicted of taking opossums without a license and was fined £2 10s and costs, and for being 'unlawfully in possession of opossum skins he was fined £5. He was charged in October, 1923, with being unlawfully on licensed premises and was fined £l. This added several offences to the list which had been produced to the court yesterday. The magistrate said he had given the case the best consideration he could. He was reluctant to send a man to gaol for the first time, but in this case he did not see that he ciluld do anything else. 11 e had decided that, he said, before he knew of those further black marks on Brennan’s record* There might be some excuse for this offence on account of Brennan having been drinking, but that fact of itself might have involved him in a further charge of driving a car while in a state of intoxication.

“Your trouble is evidently due to drink,” Mr Woodward .said to Brennan. “You have not taken the chances that 1 have given you to break away from that habit, and L fear that unless you get a sharp lesson and break away from it you will end as a criminal, being a curse to yourself and a nuisance to the community. From what I have learned of your antecedents and your early history I think you deserve a better fate than that. If you can break away from your habit you may yet win back your own respect and that of the community.” Mr Woodward said the sentence would be on the chief offence of unlawfully converting the car. He suggested that perhaps, unless the police instructions prevented it, the charge of theft of the. benzine might he withdrawn. Detective Meiklejohn said that was a matter for the magistrate, and the charge was dismissed.