When arrested for wearing the sweatshirt, it was seized, despite Kahui telling police it wasn\u2019t his. <\/p>\n
Kahui was summoned to appear in court the following week and took the bus to Lower Hutt to do so.<\/p>\n
But following his appearance, during which he was convicted and discharged for the sweatshirt offending, he was arrested again for wearing gang insignia in a public place.<\/p>\n
According to a summary of facts, as Kahui got off the bus and walked towards the court, he claimed to have got hot, and, forgetting that he was wearing \u201can old tatty black Mongrel Mob T-shirt\u201d underneath, the longtime gang member removed his top layer. <\/p>\n
Barry Kahui appeared in the Hutt Valley District Court in Lower Hutt for sentencing. Photo \/ Melissa Nightingale<\/p>\n
He was apparently seen on the city\u2019s CCTV cameras in the T-shirt.<\/p>\n
Kahui\u2019s lawyer, Chris Nicholls, has claimed police waited until he and Kahui left court several hours later to arrest Kahui as they walked back to Nicholls\u2019 office. <\/p>\n
The T-shirt was also confiscated and Kahui was summoned to appear in the Hutt Valley District Court again.<\/p>\n
That appearance, for sentencing on the T-shirt charge, was today. <\/p>\n
During the hearing, Nicholls also advanced an application under the Gangs Act to have the earlier confiscated garment – the sweatshirt – returned to Kahui\u2019s wife.<\/p>\n
In an affidavit, Kahui explained why he believed it should be given back. <\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t think I was breaking the law, as it was not a patch and the dog pictured wasn\u2019t the usual image of a bulldog for Mongrel Mob, however, after taking legal advice, I accept now that it is gang insignia and that is why I pleaded guilty.\u201d<\/p>\n
He explained the sweatshirt held sentimental value for his wife, \u201cand I don\u2019t want to upset her\u201d.<\/p>\n
It was a theme Nicholls expanded on. <\/p>\n
\u201cHappy wife, happy life, it\u2019s rather outdated now, but in my experience it\u2019s true, Your Honour,\u201d Nicholls told Judge Bruce Davidson.<\/p>\n
While Judge Davidson didn\u2019t challenge that argument, he was more troubled by Nicholls\u2019 other submissions. <\/p>\n
\u201cA cold day in January?\u201d the judge asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cA Wellington summer,\u201d Nicholls responded.<\/p>\n
He also questioned why Kahui\u2019s wife, as the sweatshirt\u2019s owner, hadn\u2019t sworn an affidavit. <\/p>\n
Nicholls explained that she expected her husband to sort the matter out, without having to get involved. <\/p>\n
But it was the rules around community probation that concerned the judge the most, clarifying with probation staff in court that different gangs attended on separate days, and those who attended weren\u2019t allowed to wear gang colours. <\/p>\n
\u2018Deliberately provocative\u2019<\/p>\n
Having heard from community probation, Judge Davidson declined the application for the return of the sweatshirt, saying it was clear Kahui intended to wear it to community work. <\/p>\n
\u201cThat was deliberately provocative, even if he did not think of it, or consider it, that way,\u201d the judge said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis is far more than an innocent occasion, rather it was an occasion where he intended to wear it to a centre which assembles people on community-based sentences.<\/p>\n
\u201cLooked at in this way, this was more than just a display of gang insignia in public.\u201d<\/p>\n
Judge Bruce Davidson declined to return to sweatshirt. Photo \/ File<\/p>\n
Judge Davidson declined to return the sweatshirt. <\/p>\n
\u201cSadly, he will have to answer to his wife when he gets home,\u201d the judge said.<\/p>\n
On the recent charge of wearing gang insignia, relating to the T-shirt, Kahui was again convicted and discharged.<\/p>\n
A potential appeal <\/p>\n
In a statement to NZME, Nicholls said his client was disappointed by the decision and intended to appeal. <\/p>\n
Nicholls says there was no evidence that Kahui wearing the sweatshirt was a deliberately provocative act on his part. <\/p>\n
He claimed his client simply wore it because he had no clean jerseys, he was cold, and he didn\u2019t think he was breaking the law. <\/p>\n
\u201cAt the Lower Hutt Community Work Centre, there is no ban on wearing red clothing. No one going to community work that day would have been intimidated by Mr Kahui\u2019s sweatshirt.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nicholls said Kahui planned to try to make up for the loss of the sweatshirt to his wife by getting her some chocolates. <\/p>\n
Catherine Hutton is an Open Justice reporter, based in Wellington. She has worked as a journalist at the Waikato Times and RNZ. Most recently she was working as a media adviser at the Ministry of Justice. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u2018I don\u2019t want to upset her\u2019 According to the summary of facts, Kahui was caught wearing the sweatshirt…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":304563,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[184,1040,1349,2082,293,166738,11517,1329,4281,4280,111,139,69,1118,1527,12641,213,114038,223,52],"class_list":{"0":"post-304562","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-barry","9":"tag-bid","10":"tag-court","11":"tag-for","12":"tag-his","13":"tag-kahui","14":"tag-loses","15":"tag-member","16":"tag-mob","17":"tag-mongrel","18":"tag-new-zealand","19":"tag-newzealand","20":"tag-nz","21":"tag-of","22":"tag-return","23":"tag-seized","24":"tag-sports","25":"tag-sweatshirt","26":"tag-the","27":"tag-wellington"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304562","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=304562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304562\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/304563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}