ESCAPED PRISONERS

Taranaki Daily News, 14 February 1933, Page 9

ESCAPED PRISONERS

BENNETT CASE RECALLED. ADDITIONAL PRISON TERMS. Auckland, Feb. 10. An eloquent plea on behalf of Charles Bennett, aged 26, who appeared on numerous charges of breaking and entering, was made by Mr. A. H. Johnstone in the Supreme Court to-day. He appeared, he said, at the urgent request of Bennett’s mother, who told him that never at any time had Bennett had anyone to speak on his behalf. ' Mr. Johnstone stated that once Bennett had escaped from custody these offences of breaking and entering were largely the logical outcome. He had either to return to gaol or to live on the country. He seemed never at any time to have had a real chance, and he had been sent to Wereroa State farm when he was 15. One was rather inclined to put forward the view that he was the product of the institutions to which he had been sent. He was obviously a man of spirit, courage and resource. His Honour said he could not see his way to take a lenient view of the case. Bennett had been at large for eight or ten months, and had been wandering about the country breaking and entering and stealing. That sort of thing could not be tolerated. If men would escape from prison, that was no excuse for wholesale robbery. Bennett was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment, the sentence to run concurrently with the present sentence of three years he was serving. “I think I could, if I pleased, declare you an habitual criminal,” said His Honour. “I

do not propose to do that, but if you come again you may be so declared and doomed to spend the most of your life inside the walls of a prison.”

Edgar William Allen, aged 29, the prisoner who escaped witty Bennett from the Hautu prison, Tokaanu, in February of last year, also came up for sentence for breaking and entering. He has already been dealt with on the charge of escaping. Mr. Meredith, Crown Prosecutor, said that in April last he was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment and declared an habitual criminal. His Honour passed sentence of two years’ imprisonment, to commer.ce at the expiry of the present sentence.