THEFT OF MONEY

Southland Times, Issue 22767, 18 December 1935, Page 6

THEFT OF MONEY

CIVIL SERVANT’S LAPSE. ADMITTED TO PROBATION. (Per United Press Association.) Christchurch, December 17. “When your case is stripped of all the nonsense which surrounds it, it becomes a simple case of theft. Unless you are prepared to realize the enormity of your offence, and how unmoral and unsocial it is, then there will be no prospect of happiness for you in the future.” These words were used by Mr Justice Northcroft in the Supreme Court to-day when admitting Hermann Henry Thiele, aged 25 years, single, to two years’ probation for theft of money as a civil servant. Mr Northcroft said he had received a report oix Thiele from Professor James Shelley, but as far as he was concerned, the report was mostly nonsense, because it tended to make Thiele feel sorry for himself, rather than ashamed of himself. Counsel (Mr Archer), for accused, submitted it was not a case of an ordinary balanced man, but was a case of a young man of definitely unbalanced temperament. His musical and artistic senses were overdeveloped to the exclusion of more important things. It was more a case for sympathetic treatment and control. “Don’t you suggest that it is more a case for discipline,” asked Mr Northcroft, who said he could see nothing indicating real remorse on the part of Thiele. The Judge was strongly impressed with the view that some severe treatment was necessary to awaken Thiele to a sense of his wrongdoing. The defalcations amounted to £l9O. “The humiliation of your position and the knowledge of your wrongdoing among your friends may provide a deterrent which would ordinarily have been provided by a prison term,” said the Judge in admitting Thiele to probation.