{"id":196103,"date":"2025-12-22T08:51:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-22T08:51:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/196103\/"},"modified":"2025-12-22T08:51:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-22T08:51:08","slug":"killer-teen-stepmum-jessica-mulford-wins-bid-to-appeal-jail-sentence-to-supreme-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/196103\/","title":{"rendered":"Killer teen stepmum Jessica Mulford wins bid to appeal jail sentence to Supreme Court"},"content":{"rendered":"

Justice Campbell said while the cause of Harlee-Rose\u2019s death<\/a> had been determined, the mechanism remains unknown.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it is consistent with stomping, kicking, or punching\u201d in such a severe way that it split her pancreas in two, lacerated her liver<\/a> and would have left her unconscious within minutes.<\/p>\n

In September, Mulford\u2019s counsel Nick Dutch failed in his Court of Appeal bid to have Mulford\u2019s prison term halved on the grounds of her age, background factors, and that Justice Campbell\u2019s seven-year starting point was too high.<\/p>\n

The Court of Appeal judges said that while another judge may have given slightly more discount for her young age and mental health at the time, they would not.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are not persuaded that an allowance of 15% amounts to error warranting appellate intervention in a case involving, as this one did, such extreme violence against a defenceless toddler.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dutch then turned to the Supreme Court, and in a decision released on Thursday, it granted Mulford leave to appeal her sentence on the grounds of \u201cwhether the Court of Appeal was correct to dismiss the appeal\u201d.<\/p>\n

The appeal will be heard at a later date. <\/p>\n

\u2018She struggled with parenting\u2019<\/p>\n

At Mulford\u2019s trial, it was heard that Harlee-Rose spent the first 18 months of her life living with her mother.<\/p>\n

However, in August 2021, she began living with her father, Dylan Berry, and his partner, Mulford, then aged 17, took on the primary caregiver role. <\/p>\n

While the Crown accepted that Mulford at times cared well for Harlee-Rose, she also struggled with parenting and resented having to look after someone else\u2019s child.<\/p>\n

\"JessicaJessica Mulford in the High Court at Hamilton in February when she was jailed for 5 years and 7 months. Photo \/ RNZ<\/p>\n

On November 9, 2021, Mulford strangled Harlee-Rose, injuring the back of her neck and causing her face to swell and discolour.<\/p>\n

There was also bruising to Harlee-Rose\u2019s earlobe consistent with pinching.<\/p>\n

Mulford lied to the medical staff, falsely claiming the toddler had fallen from a deck.<\/p>\n

Five months later, on April 9, 2022, Mulford killed Harlee-Rose with such force to her abdomen that it ruptured her internal organs.<\/p>\n

\u2018It\u2019s not the full picture\u2019<\/p>\n

At her Court of Appeal hearing, Dutch also argued that Justice Campbell\u2019s finding that the victim\u2019s injuries were consistent with Harlee-Rose having been stomped on, kicked, or punched in the abdomen was \u201cnot the full picture\u201d.<\/p>\n

He said there was evidence from a forensic pathologist that the injuries could also have been caused by an adult kneeling on the child\u2019s abdomen, or standing on it for a sustained period.<\/p>\n

Dutch said Justice Campbell shouldn\u2019t have used the facts of the strangulation as an aggravating feature when setting his seven-year starting point.<\/p>\n

He also argued her discount for youth should have been 30%, rather than the 15% she received and said the 5% for her background factors was also inadequate. He instead pushed for 10 to 15% for the latter.<\/p>\n

Concerning Mulford having a drug addiction, the Court of Appeal said in the absence of a causal or \u201ceven contributory\u201d nexus between that and her offending, \u201cthe Judge was fully entitled to decline giving any discount\u201d.<\/p>\n

The senior court also found that Justice Campbell was cognisant of the limitations of Mulford\u2019s mental health report, and ruled that her sentence was not manifestly excessive and dismissed the appeal.<\/p>\n

Belinda Feek is an Open Justice reporter based in Waikato. She has worked at NZME for 10 years and has been a journalist for 21.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Justice Campbell said while the cause of Harlee-Rose\u2019s death had been determined, the mechanism remains unknown. \u201cBut it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":196104,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[6375,1040,1349,42,1334,13832,14235,13833,43,5763,13831,30246,5163,61,40,38,41,39,6202],"class_list":["post-196103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-appeal","tag-bid","tag-court","tag-headlines","tag-jail","tag-jessica","tag-killer","tag-mulford","tag-news","tag-sentence","tag-stepmum","tag-supreme","tag-teen","tag-to","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-wins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196103\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}