course of justice<\/a>. A second charge of threatening to do grievous bodily harm was withdrawn.<\/p>\n\u2018Write me a letter\u2019<\/p>\n
At the time of the offending, between September 21 and October 5, 2024, the defendant and the victim were ex-partners.<\/p>\n
He was on remand for charges of threatening to kill, speaking threateningly and burglary in relation to the victim.<\/p>\n
On \u201cnumerous\u201d occasions during that time the pair discussed what they would do to get the charges withdrawn.<\/p>\n
During those conversations they agreed she would write a letter saying she wanted to withdraw her statement and that she had a condition that affected her memory.<\/p>\n
On September 29, the man phoned her from prison and told her, \u201cIf I catch a lag, you catch a f***ing bullet, b****\u201d.<\/p>\n
However, after writing the letter and refusing to give evidence, the charges were dismissed.<\/p>\n
\u2018He has an unenviable criminal history\u2019<\/p>\n
Crown prosecutor Lexie Glaser told the judge there were multiple aggravating features; premeditation, threats of violence, the vulnerability of the victim, and successfully perverting the course of justice.<\/p>\n
The man not only had an \u201cunenviable\u201d criminal history but he continued to offend \u201cin a very serious manner\u201d.<\/p>\n
She suggested the judge take a starting point of between three years and three years and six months\u2019 jail.<\/p>\n
\u2018He never intended to carry out the threat\u2019<\/p>\n
But counsel Kerry Hadaway explained the offending only arose \u201cfrom ongoing phone calls that yes, [client] made to the victim, however, the purpose was not to engage in this plan\u201d.<\/p>\n
She instead suggested the phone calls were \u201cmutual … pleasant, loving, talking about day-to-day things\u201d.<\/p>\n
She accepted there was premeditation \u201cto some degree\u201d because of a couple of steps in the pair\u2019s plan.<\/p>\n
There was the threat to shoot her, but Hadaway said her client didn\u2019t have any \u201cmeans or ability\u201d to execute the threat as he was behind bars.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was, to some degree, a joint plan,\u201d Hadaway said, explaining the victim, who was in court this week to support the man, did suffer from a condition that would affect her ability to give evidence. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe never had any intention for the threat to be taken seriously or to be carried out.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe does acknowledge he has an anger issue.\u201d<\/p>\n
He was also remorseful, attended a restorative justice conference and completed an anger management course while on remand.<\/p>\n
\u2018Justice was significantly interfered with\u2019<\/p>\n
Judge Marshall accepted the Crown\u2019s aggravating features and that the \u201cadministration of justice was interfered with significantly\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis culpability is high as far as this offending is concerned.\u201d<\/p>\n
Judge Marshall took a starting point of 36 months\u2019 jail before allowing 20% in discounts for the man\u2019s remorse, rehabilitation, Section 27 report and guilty plea.<\/p>\n
After getting down to 28 months, the judge added three months because of the man\u2019s criminal history and jailed him for 31 months, or two years and seven months.<\/p>\n
Belinda Feek is an Open Justice reporter based in Waikato. She has worked at NZME for 11 years and has been a journalist for 22.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The victim wrote to police, withdrawing her statement and choosing not to give evidence at the scheduled trial…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":291436,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[87543,26980,1068,1873,161460,4731,17898,28157,59502,2109,36601,82006,111,139,69,1118,8442,20937,104495,213,1361,1555,18937,61,21419,54,13118,102,62265,6730],"class_list":{"0":"post-291435","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-accusations","9":"tag-bullet","10":"tag-catch","11":"tag-charges","12":"tag-convinces","13":"tag-days","14":"tag-didnt","15":"tag-dropped","16":"tag-expartner","17":"tag-family","18":"tag-fing","19":"tag-neared","20":"tag-new-zealand","21":"tag-newzealand","22":"tag-nz","23":"tag-of","24":"tag-prison","25":"tag-prisoner","26":"tag-remand","27":"tag-sports","28":"tag-that","29":"tag-threat","30":"tag-threatened","31":"tag-to","32":"tag-towards","33":"tag-trial","34":"tag-violence","35":"tag-with","36":"tag-withdraw","37":"tag-would"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291435","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=291435"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291435\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/291436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}