{"id":604894,"date":"2026-09-19T02:54:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-19T02:54:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/604894\/"},"modified":"2026-09-19T02:54:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-19T02:54:10","slug":"canterbury-farm-shed-confrontation-leads-to-jesse-johnson-assault-conviction-upheld-on-appeal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/604894\/","title":{"rendered":"Canterbury farm shed confrontation leads to Jesse Johnson assault conviction upheld on appeal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Johnson was sentenced following a trial in the Christchurch District Court<\/a> in April 2025.<\/p>\n

He appealed unsuccessfully to the High Court, and the Court of Appeal<\/a> has now declined his application to bring a second appeal.<\/p>\n

Broke down<\/p>\n

According to the senior court\u2019s recent decision, on September 2, 2023, Johnson and others were four-wheel driving in the Waipara Riverbed.<\/a><\/p>\n

One of the vehicles broke down, so Johnson and another man went to a nearby farm seeking help.<\/p>\n

No one was there, so the pair entered a large open shed housing a tractor. <\/p>\n

The farm owner, carrying a rifle, and his daughter walked into the farmyard after rabbit shooting.<\/p>\n

Johnson asked the farmer for help using the tractor to assist the broken-down four-wheel drive, but the farmer refused.<\/p>\n

A disagreement led to a scuffle and violence.<\/p>\n

An allegation that Johnson pinned the farmer by his throat and punched him in the face while trying to take the firearm wasn\u2019t proven.<\/p>\n

Nor were allegations that he had assaulted the farmer\u2019s daughter.<\/p>\n

The only charge the jury was convinced beyond reasonable doubt of was Johnson punching the farmer in the head, throat and chest.<\/p>\n

Discharge sought but declined<\/p>\n

After being found guilty, Johnson sought a discharge without conviction, but the application was declined and he was instead sentenced to 40 hours\u2019 community work on the assault charge.<\/p>\n

He was sentenced to a further 40 hours\u2019 community work upon remission of outstanding fines of between $2000 and $3000.<\/p>\n

Johnson successfully appealed against the sentence when the High Court<\/a> found flaws in the lower court\u2019s sentencing procedure and set aside the order remitting fines and the related 40 hours\u2019 community work sentence.<\/p>\n

Johnson\u2019s lawyer said the approach was erroneous, which the Crown accepted and Justice Robert Osborne agreed.<\/p>\n

He quashed the sentence, noting Johnson had already completed 40 hours of community work.<\/p>\n

Johnson then appealed to the Court of Appeal in a further bid to wipe the conviction.<\/p>\n

He had argued it was the farmer who had been the aggressor. <\/p>\n

The Court of Appeal said the argument was supported in part by a video taken by the farmer\u2019s daughter on her phone. <\/p>\n

But Justices Rebecca Ellis, Cameron Mander and Ian Gault were not satisfied the proposed appeal met the threshold test for general or public importance, or that a miscarriage of justice had occurred, or would occur if the appeal was not heard.<\/p>\n

They said in their decision this month the question of the farmer\u2019s \u201cmotive to lie\u201d, and the jeopardy he was potentially in, was squarely before the jury.<\/p>\n

Johnson\u2019s appeal to the High Court was advanced on two grounds but only one remained relevant in the Court of Appeal.<\/p>\n

His lawyer said the District Court judge ought to have directed the jury to treat the farmer\u2019s evidence with caution because it may have been unreliable.<\/p>\n

\u2018Farmer had motive\u2019<\/p>\n

Johnson contended that the farmer had a motive to give false evidence prejudicial to Johnson because he was potentially in jeopardy as a result of the assault and threat shown on the video.<\/p>\n

Both higher courts were satisfied that a reliability direction was not necessary.<\/p>\n

Justice Ellis said the possibility that the victim\u2019s account of the relevant events was influenced by a motive to avoid prosecution for his own actions was squarely before the jury. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe victim was cross-examined extensively on the basis he was fabricating much of his evidence, minimising his own actions and inflating Mr Johnson\u2019s actions to suit his own purposes. <\/p>\n

The judge also reminded the jury of that in his summing up, Justice Ellis said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn this case, the jury would not have been materially assisted by such a direction. I am satisfied that for these reasons, the judge did not err by not giving a reliability direction.\u201d<\/p>\n

Johnson told NZME he was in talks with his lawyer about possible further steps.<\/p>\n

Tracy Neal is a Nelson-based Open Justice reporter at NZME. She was previously RNZ\u2019s regional reporter in Nelson-Marlborough and has covered general news, including court and local government for the Nelson Mail.<\/p>\n

Join the NZ Herald\u2019s Open Justice team for Case by Case<\/a>, a video and podcast series examining the disputes and decisions making headlines across New Zealand. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Johnson was sentenced following a trial in the Christchurch District Court in April 2025. He appealed unsuccessfully to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":604895,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[74,6375,17704,46300,8126,1875,6384,15970,6097,18089,3233,12026,298118,5838,2537,8274,22055,111,139,69,90,298120,162692,298119,40249,26639,213,61,6382,1315,664,35965,6845,3608,1316],"class_list":["post-604894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-after","tag-appeal","tag-assault","tag-broke","tag-canterbury","tag-carrying","tag-confrontation","tag-conviction","tag-down","tag-dramatic","tag-farm","tag-farmer","tag-fourwheeldrive","tag-help","tag-jesse","tag-johnson","tag-leads","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-rabbitshooting","tag-rifle","tag-riverbed","tag-seeking","tag-shed","tag-sports","tag-to","tag-took","tag-trip","tag-turn","tag-upheld","tag-vehicle","tag-were","tag-when"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604894","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=604894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604894\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/604895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=604894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=604894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=604894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}