VICIOUS OFFENCE

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 18632, 16 February 1935, Page 6

VICIOUS OFFENCE

BLACKMAILER GAOLED THREE-YEAR SENTENCE (Par Press Association.) AUCKLAND, this day. Sentence of .thtiSfe'years’ hard labor .was pissecf by Mr. Justice Fair to-day .on Alfred McDoWcll, laborer, who was found; guilty of blackmailing an Auckland professional man. Counsel for the prisoner said the complainant had admitted that he had been influenced, in continuing his payments to the", prisoner by a desire to retrieve m'ohey previously paid. - The judge said McDowell had been found'gililty on 10 counts. In respect of three of them he was liable to life imprisonment. Blackmail was a peculiarly vicious and cruel offence. Once a .victim had made a payment and committed himself in one .way, lie found himsfelf exposed to a series of threats which exposed him to torture, and might ruin his character. It might be that a man of; strong character would make a stand from tile beginning, but it so happened that the victim might not dire to expose himself to having hik character blackened, however lie might clear himself. It was hard in this ease to find a redeeming feature. The prisoner was a comparatively young man, there was no evidence that he was uilder pressure or m serious want, and the money he secured he had wasted.