THE CASE OF W. C. PRIOR.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1163, 15 June 1894, Page 29

THE CASE OF W. C. PRIOR.

Walter Charlos Prior, who was convicted at the Supreme Court on Monday of uttering a forged cheque to Mrs Fama knowing it to have been forged, was brought up on Tuesday for sentence. Mr Wilford addressed His Honor tho Chief Justice in mitigation of sentence. Ho said the prisoner was willing to plead guilty to a second charge of uttering a forged cheque purporting to be signed with tho name of J. B. Harcourt. Tho prisoner was well connected in tho Mount Gambier district (Australia), and in a drunken freak he had committed tho offences of which he had been found guilty. His friends were willing to receive him back, and under tho circumstances counsol said he hoped tho sentence would bo a light one. His Honor, in delivering sentence, said the crime of which the prisoner had been convicted was the most barefaced and impudent case of forgery and uttering which had ever come beforo him. Mr Wilford pointed out that of the first charge of forgery and uttering tho jury had found the prisoner not guilty, and that in the second case he had only been found guilty of uttering. His. Honor said tho jury had stated that they thought the prisoner was not guilty of forgery, but he thought and said ho was guilty. The prisoner had only recently come out of prison after undergoing a sentence of 12 months' imprisonment for larceny. His case was a thoroughly bad one, and he only regretted that respectable men and women, such as the witnesses for the prosecution undoubtedly wore, should havo allowed themselves—innocently, of course—to be duped by their readiness to give a chance customer like the prisoner blank cheques. With regard to the absence of Mr Reid as a witness for the prosecution, he (the Judge) was not awaro on the previous day that Mr Reid was absent from town on business.

His Honor then sentenced the prisoner to four years' penal servitude.