CHRISTIAN PACIFISTS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24630, 11 June 1941, Page 6

CHRISTIAN PACIFISTS

DUALITY OF CONVICTIONS TEST BEFORE APPEAL COURT <P.A.) WELLINGTON, June 10. The Court of Appeal was engaged yesterday hearing a case stated of the King against Ormond Edward Burton. David William Silvester, John Robert Hammer ton, James Doherty, and John Whitley Boal, members of the Christian Pacifist Society, who were found guilty'--at" the last Supreme Court ses T siori at Wellington on charges of conducting meetings prohibited under the provisions of the Public Safety Emergency Regulations, 1940. .The hearing was unfinished when the court rose. The society decided to hold meetings in a Wellington public reserve, and the prisoners on separate Friday evenings persisted in continuing to address bystanders when called on to desist by the police. . Each was brought on different; idates before the Magistrate's* Court:'«nd' charged under the Police Offences Act -with- wilfully obstructing Pdlipe 'SuperintendentLopdell in the execution of his duty, and each was convicted and sentenced on this charge to "three months' imprisonment. After verdicts of "guilty" in the Supreme Court, the Chief- Justice,-Sir Michael Myers, raised a question for the opinion of the Court of Appeal whether, in respect of each prisoner,, the offence charged against him under the Police Offences Act, and the offence charged under the Public Safety Emergency Regulations were substantially the same offence. The question, is whether each prisoner can, or should in the circumstances, be further punished in respect of the Supreme Court charge, also the position generally in respect of the conviction of these prisoners now serving their Magistrate's Court sentences.