GUILT ADMITTED.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume VI, Issue 1787, 5 November 1919, Page 7

GUILT ADMITTED.

PRISONER ENDORSES JURY'S VERDICT. A HYPOCRITICAL LETTER. It is a rare occurrence for a prisoner at the bar of the Supreme Court, who has pleaded not guilty in the Magistrate's Court, and also not guity in the Supreme Court, thus submitting himself for trial by a jury of his peers, to admit his guilt in court after the jury has returned a verdict of guilty. This, however, was dono by George Judge, a middle-aged man, who was found guilty at the Supreme Court, Cliristchurch, yesterday, on five different counts of unlawful carnal knowledge of a girl 14 years and nine months of age. When the usual question as to whether he had anything to say why the judgment of the- Court should not be passed on him was addressed to the prisoner, his counsel, Mr R. Twyneham, did not rise to address the Court. However, Judge said he would like to say a few words, and permission was given him to speak. The prisoner said he was not as bad as the evidence mado him out to be. He said he had written two anonymous letters to the girl's mother, telling her to keep her daughter off the streets. Judge then went on to admit that he had misconducted himself with the girl. In sentencing the accused to three years' imprisonment, with hard labour, his Honour Mr Justice Herdman said it was regrettable that a man of the prisoner's age should get himself into such trouble. However, apparently it was constitutional with him. In May, 1912, the prisoner had been convicted of indecent assault and sentenced to seven years' imprisonment." Although his present offence was not so serious as indecent assault, nevertheless it was serious enough. After sentence had been passed, Mr Twyneham said that he wished to point out that Judge had always denied his guilt to him. His Honour said he quite understood the position. In view of the accused's admission of guilt and his previous conviction, a letter, written- by him to the girl when she was leaving school, is of interest. In this letter, which the girl said she received after accused had begun to misconduct himself with her, Judge expressed the hope that the girl would lead a clean and God-fearing life. He advised her to obey her parents in all things, and said ho would pray to God for her welfare.

In his summing up, Mr A. T. Donnelly, who appeared for the Crown, said that, on the face of it, this letter seemed to show that Judge was an upright and God-fearing man, who was solicitous of the girl's welfare, and not her seducer. In the course of his address to the jury, Mr Tvvyneham said that, if accused wero guilty, then the letter showed him to bo a most arrant blackguard, who deserved sympathy from no one. #from tho evidence of tho mother of the girl,- it was apparent that she (tho mother) had trusted Judge, and had regarded him as a true friend of her daughter.