The Sentence of Rangi.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume III, Issue 391, 14 December 1889, Page 3

The Sentence of Rangi.

TWELVE MONTHS’ HARD LABOR,

Tua prisoner Rangiuia pleaded guilty, at the Auckland Supreme Court this Week. Mr Whitaker applied that the prisoner be admitted to the provisions of the First Offenders Probation Act. He pointed out that the prisoner was an aboriginal native, and had previously resided in Napier and Gisborne, and on his arrival in Auckland, he was received by several religious bodies, and his treatment by them was so hospitable that it had to a certain extent affected his mind. The prisoner had been married only a fortnight before he committed the offence for which he was charged, and he could hardly be looked upon in the same light as a European. There was no doubt that with the love of finery inherent in the native breast, the prisoner was anxious that his wife should be decked in a becoming and proper manner, and that no doubt led him to Commit the offence.

Hs would decidedly refuse to put the prisoner under the provisions of the Probation Act.

His floor, addrearing the prisoner, said i—l look upon this as a bad oase. It has been urged by your counsel that you are a native. I say, in answer to that, that you have had a very good education in every respect as if you had been ot a different race, and there are none of those excuses of ignorance to be pleaded on your account. It is also urged that you bad become associated with a religious get of persons in this town, and possibly you yourself made great professions ot religion, though I do not know that that is the case. At all events, it appears, from the statement of your counsel, that you were received in a very friendly manner by those persons; and what do we find ? Thia is not an offence committed under some sudden impulse, but a most ingenious and careful robbery by means of false keys; and certainly by your conduct after you risked the character of another person by depositing the Stolen goods upon his premises. I can see no excuse whatever for your conduct, either in the fact that you are ot the native race, or that you were associated with religious people, or again in the fact that you were recently married. The two latter grounds certainly ought to have led tq some greater tq lybaj yog were doing, and what you must have known to be a gteyious wrong. The sen'enoe' of the Cour) fa that you be imprisoned ;qd kept tq lq|nj i—--13 (lipsndur iponihS;