“NO POSSIBLE EXCUSE”

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 663, 15 May 1929, Page 11

“NO POSSIBLE EXCUSE”

MAN’S SERIOUS CRIME JUDGE’S SEVERE COMMENT On a charge of indecent exposure before an 11-year-old girl at Oneliunga on March 23, Peter Howie (Mr. Noble) stood his second trial before Mr. Justice Herdman in the Supreme Court today. Howie was acquitted on indictments of indecent assault and assault on the girl at his trial last week, but the jury agreed on the third count. Mr. V. R. Meredith, Crown Prosecutor, prosecuted. The case was heard in camera. Similar evidence to that at the first trial was given by the children in the house where the alleged incident occurred. It was said that when arrested accused remarked to his escorting detective, “This is what comes of going on the booze. I have been off it for seven months- I’ll get five years for it this time.” The jury returned with a verdict of guilty after three-quarters of an hour’s retirement. Sentence was immediately passed on Howie. Mr. Noble said that the only plea in extenuation he could make was that prisoner had been drinking and had committed this offence while under the influence of liquor. “It is very difficult to understand why you committed this abominable offence,” remarked his Honour. “It is a remarkable thing that in 1926 you were sentenced to two years’ gaol for indecently assaulting the same girl—your stepdaughter. Now in effect you have done the same thing. I cannot understand how a man should do this sort of thing. You have no possible excuse. On a former occasion you were seni tenced to two years’ hard labour and I can do no better than to impose a similar term-”