PREFERRED HARD LABOUR

Taranaki Daily News, 5 August 1931, Page 7

PREFERRED HARD LABOUR

WELLINGTON MAN SENTENCED.

LABOURER GUILTY OF THEFTS.

By Telegraph.—Press Association.

Wellington, Last Night. “I would like to ask that I be given hard labour and not a period of reformative detention,” said Leonard Walter Lash, labourer, aged 34, when asked if he had anything to say before he was sentenced on charges of breaking and entering and theft by the Chief Justice in the Supreme Court to-day. Lash pleaded not guilty to four counts preferred against him, but the jury, after a retirement of half an hour, returned a verdict of guilty .on the charges of breaking and entering the shop of Howard Parsons, tobacconist, Mercer Street, and stealing clothing. Answering His Honour, Lash admitted that he had been sentenced to three months’ imprisonment in June, 1929, but said that if he had had the means he could have proved his case. He admitted he had been sentenced to nine months’ imprisonment for forging a cheque. “I think a term of hard labour would meet the case,” he said. “Reformative detention is just the same as hard labour, and I would sooner have hard labour.” His Honour: “There is a difference, you know, but not in the actual treatment.” A uentence of two years’; imprisonment with hard labour was imposed on each charge, the sentences to be concurrent.

“Thank you,” said the prisoner as he left the dock.