Judge refuses to stop trial over ‘detestation’ to burglary

SOCIETY’S “detestation” of the crime of burglary has not lessened since times when it attracted the death penalty, a High Court judge said as he refused to stop the trial of an alleged burglar.

Mr Justice John Hedigan said that throughout human civilisation, burglary has been considered “one of the most serious crimes known to law”.

In many societies it attracted the death penalty, “frequently attended by gruesome barbarities,” to demonstrate peoples’ loathing for the violation of the sanctity of their homes.