MOTORIST PUNISHED

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 56, Issue 4046, 11 May 1938, Page 11

MOTORIST PUNISHED

NEGLIGENT DRIVING CAUSING DEATH. “JUSTICE NOT SADISTIC.” Further comment on negligent driving cases was made bv the Chief Justice, Sir Michael Myers, in the Supreme Court, Hamilton, yesterday, sentencing Bernard Zinsli. labourer, of Te Kuiti (Mr E. M. Mackersey), following his conviction on a charge of negligent driving causing the death of Edna Margaret Walsh, of Hamilton. Zinsli was fined £3O and ordered to pay the costs of the prosecution. In addition, his driving license was cancelled and he was prohibited from obtaining another for three years. The jury found that the death of the injured person was caused by prisoner’s negligent driving. On the evidence, that verdict was amply justified, in His Honor’s opinion. “But,” he added, “just as the verdict of the jury must depend upon the events, and the facts and circumstances of each case, so must the

question of sentence. Justice is not sadistic. It does not require thUt every person convicted of an offence of this kind, or any other offence, should necessarily be punished by being sent to prison. EXTENUATING CIRCUMSTANCES. “Now, in your case, while the verdict connotes that the suggestion offered on your behalf that you were suddenly overtaken by ’ vertigo could not be acepted, it is the fact that you were suffering from an abscess in the car. It is also the fact that you had had a tiring day, driving from Te Kuiti to Auckland in the morning, returning almost immediately in the car, but not driving and that at 3.30 p.m. you took the car out again and drove it. I am satisfied that you were suffering from fatigue, intensified by your and that you should not have been driving. But I feel equally satisfied that you did not appreciate- your condition and the danger consequent unon ■ it. That was no doubt the view taken by the jury and their reason for recommending you to leniency. “In all the circumstances of the case, I think that the interests of justice and of the public can be sufficiently served without sending you to prison. CONVICTION’ AS DETERRENT. “I have repeatedly. said—and other judges have similarly expressed themselves—that that certainty of conviction in a proper case is much more important than the quantum of the sentence. The certainty that the jury will convict where negligent driving is proved and the knowledge that the prohibition of the- grant of a driving license for a period of years will almost certainly follow a conviction, should in themselves operate as a strong deterrent against offences of this character, apart from the probability of a term of imprisonment being imposed. “In your case there is no suggestion that intoxicating liquor was in aijy way responsible for your negligence.”