High Court at Hamilton<\/a> on Monday, Goodwin acknowledged it was a \u201ctragic case\u201d, where the outcome for the victim and his wh\u0101nau had been \u201cbrutal\u201d.<\/p>\nHowever, Goodwin believed the gravity of the outcome had been overemphasised in determining the appropriate sentence for Kaur.<\/p>\n
There had been a failure by Judge Arthur Tompkins, in Goodwin\u2019s submission, to look behind the offending.<\/p>\n
Goodwin referred at length to a psychological report which referred to Kaur\u2019s mental state, and her cultural background, which together presented, in his submission, a \u201ccausal link\u201d to what happened on June 27 last year.<\/p>\n
Goodwin said the expert had clearly set out the \u201cpsychological collapse\u201d and impairment of decision making, but the judge hadn\u2019t clearly explained, in sentencing, why he hadn\u2019t taken it into account.<\/p>\n
![\"]()
Sharanjit Kaur was jailed for four years in the Hamilton District Court on a charge of reckless driving causing the death of Jonathan Baker last year. Photo \/ Belinda Feek<\/p>\n
High Court judge Justice James MacGillivray asked Tompkins how what was set out in the psychological report \u2013 issues of isolation, depression, and suicidal ideation \u2013 was linked to the \u201csustained rage\u201d that had been at play in the offending. <\/p>\n
Goodwin said the expert appeared to be saying there had been an accumulation of things over time, against the backdrop of a \u201ccomplex relationship\u201d, which had led to the \u201cmeltdown\u201d.<\/p>\n
It was \u201coverly simplistic\u201d to characterise it simply as \u201crage\u201d.<\/p>\n
Kaur was someone who was \u201cseverely depressed, hugely anxious\u201d. There had been socio-cultural issues which had led her to be ostracised and isolated from her community after beginning a relationship with Mr R, and there was still emotional trauma from issues related to an arranged marriage back in India.<\/p>\n
This had all led to a \u201ccollapse in decision making\u201d as she became \u201coverwhelmed by emotions\u201d. <\/p>\n
The trigger had been seeing a recent photo of her partner with his wife \u2013 he was living with Kaur for five days a week, but staying with his wife and children on the other two days.<\/p>\n
Kaur saw a photo of Mr R and his wife and children all dining at a restaurant, and Mr R had lied to her about the visit.<\/p>\n
They had an argument which led to a \u201ccascade of emotional dysfunction and cognitive overload\u201d, Goodwin said.<\/p>\n
However, Crown prosecutor Rebecca Mann said Judge Tompkins had all the material available to him at sentencing, and rather than having no regard to it, the \u201cexperienced\u201d judge had assessed it and rightly determined it wasn\u2019t relevant to the sentencing outcome.<\/p>\n
\u2018Deliberate reckless driving\u2019<\/p>\n
Mann noted there had been prolonged bad driving, where Kaur had stopped, got out of the car, and then continued to chase Mrs R.<\/p>\n
She had been effectively \u201clying in wait\u201d for her, Mann said.<\/p>\n
There was a \u201chigh degree of persistence in this course of driving\u201d, Mann said, which didn\u2019t support the defence\u2019s submission of having \u201cany link with depression and the like\u201d.<\/p>\n
Mann said there wasn\u2019t the \u201ccausal nexus\u201d, and there was nothing to suggest the judge had erred in his determinations at sentencing.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was deliberate reckless driving, undertaken in a targeted way,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
While there may have been cultural shunning and isolation that preceded the offending, there was no evidence that it had been causative, in the Crown\u2019s submission.<\/p>\n
Goodwin, in reply, said the Crown was taking a \u201chard line\u201d in the case.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Crown\u2019s really saying you should be ignoring discount after discount,\u201d he told Justice MacGillivray. <\/p>\n
\u201cIgnoring a discount for mental health, ignoring a discount for remorse, ignoring a discount for rehabilitation … and in a sense treating Ms Kaur as having none of those issues and having done absolutely nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n
That was the only way to justify a four-year sentence, and it wasn\u2019t \u201cthe situation here\u201d.<\/p>\n
Goodwin\u2019s overall position was that the judge should have adopted a lower starting point, given greater discounts, and, at the end of it, imposed a sentence of home detention.<\/p>\n
Justice MacGillivray reserved his decision.<\/p>\n
Hannah Bartlett is a Tauranga-based Open Justice reporter at NZME. She previously covered court and local government for the Nelson Mail, and before that was a radio reporter at Newstalk ZB.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kaur was jailed for four years after being sentenced in the Hamilton District Court earlier this year. Now,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23589,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5761,15435,3549,4189,24305,11784,24308,24307,18557,111,43,139,69,8442,5763,24306,61,17454,1354],"class_list":["post-23588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-appeals","tag-bad","tag-crash","tag-driving","tag-enraged","tag-fatal","tag-headon","tag-kaur","tag-led","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-prison","tag-sentence","tag-sharanjit","tag-to","tag-whose","tag-woman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23588","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=23588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23588\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}