HEAVY SENTENCES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21165, 23 April 1932, Page 14

HEAVY SENTENCES.

SHOOTING OF POLICEMAN. WHIPPING ORDERED. The Court of Criminal Appeal in Melbourne recently dismissed the appeals of James Adams and Harold Williams, who had been found guilty of having shot I'lainclothes-Constable Derham in Flinders Lane on the night of November 20 with intent to do grievous bodily harm and of robbery in company. Subsequently Mr. Justice Macfarlan sentenced the two men, as well as Hugfi Martin, the third man, who had been found guilty of both charges. Each of the prisoners was sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment on the major charge and to 10 years for robbery, but Mr. Justice Macfarlan made five years of the second sentence concurrent with the first. Thus in each case the imprisonment will amount to 20 years. His Honor also ordered that each man should receive a whipping of 15 strokes.

In sentencing the men, Mr. Justice Macfarlan said the crime was carefully preconcerted. It was accompanied by deliberate cruelty and violence. It constituted not merely cruelty, but a challenge to the laws of order and the community itself. The sentence would protect the community from the commission of similar offences. Every Judge shrank from inflicting severe corporal punishment, but in the present case the Court would be shirking its responsibilities if it refrained from doing so.