SUPREME COURT

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIII, 13 February 1929, Page 5

SUPREME COURT

AUCKLAND SESSIONS (By Telegraph.— Press Association) AUCKLAND, This Day. In the Supreme Court Mr Justice Blair sentenced Frank James Smith to reformative detention not exceeding three years for the theft of 231 sheep at Woodleigh, Waikato.

WESTFIELD HOLD=UP

AUCKLAND, This Day,

David McKenzie Stewart and Boy Patrick Kitching appeared for sentence to-day in connection with the Westfield hold-up of Sam Hendei - son and other jockeys on the night of the Te Ivuiti races. .

Counsel for Kitching stated that a representative of his family’s trustees, who came across from Melbourne stilted that if prisoner were allowed to leave hjew Zealand, arrangements had been made for him to go to his brother’s farm in Western Australia, where lie would be kept for at least six or seven years. The trustees had been advised to allow Kitching money up to. £IOO if he demanded it, and were empowered to give him £IOOO if for some reasonable venture. Sentence was deferred till this afternoon.

Counsel stated that the other prisoner (Stewart) had cabled America for 500 dollars, saying be was in desperate trouble. The only reply lie received was: “Love and sympathy; trust in GodMother.” Counsel in the course of his address said Stewart was an air pilot and as the result of a newspaper interview in Auckland was socially lionised because engaged in an aeronautic venture in the Dominion. As the result of social calls the pair became financially embarrassed and “went into committee to discuss ways and means,” and hit upon the hold-up idea, which counsel declared was clumsily carried out, prisoners being almost too frightened to go on with it. The Crown Prosecutor said that for that very reason much more serious consequences may have resulted with the prisoners presenting revolvers. COMPENSATION CASE PALMERSTON N., This Day. In tlie Supreme Court judgment was given this morning in a claim by David Buick against the Railway Department in a case in which £4400 was claimed for six acres of land taken, plus depreciation of the balance of the farm, in connection with the railway deviation at Palmerston North. The Court awarded £2309 and ordered tlie department to build a road giving improved access to tlie farm.