STIGMA ON MAN’S LIFE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 83, Issue 39, 16 February 1939, Page 8

STIGMA ON MAN’S LIFE

PRISONER’S BITTER PLEA FROM DOCK FELL FOUL OF THE LAW' USELESS TO EXPECT MERCY [ Per Press Association.] AUCKLAND, Feb. 15. In a dramatic and bitter speech from the dock in the Supreme Court to-day George Henderson, aged 30 years, a labourer, told how experience had made him believe that conviction on a criminal charge played a stigma on a man’s life. Henderson had been found guilty by the jury on three charges of vagrancy and Mr. Justice Fair sentenced him to 12 months’ imprisonment. "I wish to say I have come to the conclusion that once a man has had the misfortune to fall against the law and then falls again it is absolutely useless for him to expect any mercy, justice cr respect," said Henderson, before sentence was passed. "Although he has already paid his previous debt to society, the machinery of the law will not be satisfied to punish the victim of circumstances only for the offence for which he has been convicted. He is forever, in the eye. of his fellow men, an outcast and his word can never be taken as the truth." Henderson added that he had been found guilty on this occasion because he had been hampered by circumstances from proving his innocence. The Judge commented on Henderson’s long list, of previous convictions.