Reducing Penalties Not intended

Northern Advocate, 28 September 1949, Page 5

Reducing Penalties Not intended

Court Believes . . .

WELLINGTON, Wed. (P.A.).— The Court of Appeal today gave judgment in the appeal against sentence by William Ruha Matthews, of Auckland. Prisoner had been found guilty on Juiy 26 on a charge of manslaughter and sentenced by Mr Justice Finlay at Auckland to life imprisonment. It had been contended, on behalf of prisoner, that since the death penalty now had been abolished and a life sentence was a sentence for murder, a sentence less than life should be imposed in cases of manslaughter. Giving the judgment of the Court of Appeal today, Mr Justice Kennedy stated that the only punishments which Parliament reviewed in 1941 were death by hanging, flogging and whipping, each of which it abolished as a punishment but it left the other punishments in the Crimes Act standing unaffected. COULD NOT BE WORSE This indicated, so the court ponsidered, a repugnance to particular forms of punishment, but did not manifest; the intention of the legislature that all other punishments should be scaled down, and that the maximum sentence still retained for other offences should never, under any circumstances, be imposed. Therefore, the court felt that the maximum sentence of life imprisonment was appropriate in certain cases of manslaughter. The case before the court was such that no case of manslaughter could be worse, and tho maximum penalty was appropriate in the circumstances. The court dismissed the appeal.