FORGED NOTES.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 189, 11 August 1931, Page 6

FORGED NOTES.

Three Men Are Sentenced For Uttering. GUILTY ON RETRIAL. Per Press Association. AUCKLAND, August 11. Maurice Goodman, aged thirty-three, Percy Short, aged fifty-two, and Percy John M’Kenzie Short, aged twenty, were found guilty on retrial on four charges of uttering forged banknotes on April 24. They were sentenced to-day by Mr Justice Smith. Mr V. R. Meredith, the Crown Prosecutor, described the offences as a determined raid on the public of considerable magnitude. At the same time as’a trail of forged notes was laid from Auckland to Hamilton, many similar notes were issued in Wellington. The judge said he had no doubt that, despite the prisoners’ protestations of innocence, they had uttered the notes. The man who caused their manufacture had not been caught. Goodman and Short, senior, were each sentenced to one year’s hard labour, followed by two years’ reformative detention. Short, jun., was committed to the Borstal for two years. When these men were first tried nearly two weeks ago, the jury faled to agree after a retirement of four and a half hours. When the new trial was commenced on Saturday, counsel for the accused freely, exercised their right to challenge jurymen, four being rejected before the first one was allowed to take his seat. Altogether, 35 names were caled before the full panel of 12 jurymen was obtained. The charges related to incidents at Otahuhu, Papakura and Huntlv. A further charge of conspiring together to defraud the public by uttering forged banknotes, which was preferred against the men when the first trial took place, was withdrawn on the re-trial.