{"id":4153,"date":"2025-09-05T17:18:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T17:18:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/4153\/"},"modified":"2025-09-05T17:18:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T17:18:11","slug":"nz-defence-force-appeals-inadequate-sentence-of-soldier-guilty-of-attempted-espionage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/4153\/","title":{"rendered":"NZ Defence Force appeals \u2018inadequate\u2019 sentence of soldier guilty of attempted espionage"},"content":{"rendered":"

The soldier also offered to get a covert device into NZ Army headquarters.<\/p>\n

After several days of deliberation at the Linton Military Camp, the Chief Judge of the Court Martial of New Zealand, Kevin Riordan, and a panel of three senior NZDF personnel arrived at a sentence of two years to be served at the Burnham Military Camp\u2019s detention facility.<\/p>\n

Known as the Services Corrective Establishment<\/a> (SCE), the maximum anyone can spend there is two years, and if the private\u2019s sentence had exceeded that, he would have been sent to a civilian prison.<\/p>\n

The maximum punishment for attempted espionage under New Zealand law is seven years\u2019 imprisonment. <\/p>\n

At sentencing, Judge Riordan said the panel spent the bulk of its deliberations on deciding whether to send the soldier to Burnham or to a civilian prison.<\/p>\n

Now, the Director of Military Prosecutions (DMP) has filed a notice of appeal of that sentence to the Court Martial Appeal Court on the basis that the sentence was \u201cmanifestly inadequate\u201d.<\/p>\n

If the DMP is successful in its appeal, and the soldier receives a higher sentence, he will have to be sent to a civilian prison.<\/p>\n

Jeremy Wilkinson is an Open Justice reporter based in Manawat\u016b, covering courts and justice issues with an interest in tribunals. He has been a journalist for nearly a decade and has worked for NZME since 2022.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The soldier also offered to get a covert device into NZ Army headquarters. After several days of deliberation…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4154,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[74,5768,5761,5765,5767,124,1887,1403,5766,1872,1888,5760,3368,5762,2250,5769,111,43,139,69,1118,5763,5764,80],"class_list":["post-4153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-after","tag-appealed","tag-appeals","tag-attempted","tag-convicted","tag-could","tag-countrys","tag-defence","tag-espionage","tag-face","tag-first","tag-force","tag-guilty","tag-inadequate","tag-longer","tag-manifestly","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-sentence","tag-soldier","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4153","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=4153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4153\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}