SENT TO GAOL

New Zealand Times, Volume XLVII, Issue 10896, 10 May 1921, Page 5

SENT TO GAOL

GUILTY OF BOOKMAKING. STRONG APPEAL FOR LENIENCY. r ~ " run rrtKss a rkociatiov. CHRISTCHURCH, May .9. William Whitta, Who was convicted of carrying on the business of a bookmaker in Christchurch, was sentenced by Mr Justice Herdman to sue months’ imprisonment with hard labour, and also ordered to pay the cost of the prosecution. __ . Mr Thomas, who appeared for Whitta, made a strong appeal for leniency, urging that a fine he imposed instead of imprisonment. The judge said prisoner had been before the court on several occasions m connection with offences relating to gambling. It was clear from the evidence that prisoner and his son had carried on the business of bookmakers extensively. Prisoner know the state of the law, and had deliberately made up his mind to defy it. He would take into consideration prisoner’s age, and the fact that this was the first case of the kind in which a jury had found an accused person guilty. PLEA BY ACCUSED’S COUNSEL. “GAMBLING A NATIONAL FAILING.” In appealing to Mr Justice Herdman for leniency for the bookmaker Whitta, his counsel, Mr C.S.Thomas, sad: “For years gambling and hookmaking liad been canned on in New Zealand from one end to the other. The Legislature in the past tried to curb it and bring it within reasonable bounds, but I am afraid without success. The reason, no doubt, is that gambling is a national failing and is taken part in from the highest to the -lowest. It is by only the most stringent measures that the Government will control it. Whitta s offence is a statutory one, and not a moral one. It i 9 not allied to an ordinary criminal offence. Two wrongs, of course, do not make a right, but thousands of men, up to the time last session’s Act was passed, had committed the same offence. Betting haa been going on, and it had been looked upon as things at which the Legislature winked. It is realised, now, that the Legislature will not wink at it. In this court you have granted probation to thieves, rogues, vagabonds, to the ordinary criminal, and I ask you to extend to Whitta the same clemency aB you extend to men guilty of criminal offences.