SUPREME COURT

New Zealand Times, Volume XL, Issue 9044, 15 May 1915, Page 10

SUPREME COURT

AN ABNORMAL PERSON FiV E YEARS’ REFORMATIVE TREATMENT. The last case on the criminal calendar was concluded in the Supreme Court yesterday, before His Honour tho Chief Justice (Sir Robert Stout). This embodied a charge against a middle-aged man named William Jones, alias Feartie, alias O’HaJloran, of having indecently assaulted a boy aged six years, at Wellington, on December 9til last. Mr V. R. Meredith appeared for the Crown, and the accused conducted his own defence.

hfter a retirement of about half an hour, the jury returned a verdict ot guilty. The* foreman, speaking on oebaif rf the jury, said he would like to express appreciation of the patience shown by His Honour iu dealing witn the case’, and of the fact that_ ho had granted the prisoner every facility for obtaining all the information necessary for his defence.

His Honour remarked that it was tho duty of all judges to see' to this. When asked if ho had anything to say why sentence should not bo passed upon him, Jones handed in a written statement.

“That is just what 1 thought,”*said His Honour, after perusing the document. “Dr Hassall says the same. It is quite posible that, owing to mental deficiency, you ' committed this assault without knowing what you wore doing.” His Honour added that he did, not intend to sentence the accused, to imprisonment, but to put him under tho control of the Prison Board. There wore a number of previous convictions against him, several of which were indecency, and ho had .been three times, in a mental hospital. The sentenced now imposed was five years’ reformative treatment, His Honour explaining that the Prison Board would release the accused when they thought fit to do so.