The group took his bag, containing his wallet and his cellphone.<\/p>\n
Heta was later seen driving a vehicle that was taken from the property.<\/p>\n
He was charged with aggravated robbery and unlawfully taking a motor vehicle. <\/p>\n
He pleaded guilty to both charges after the victim gave evidence against him at a trial in the Rotorua District Court. <\/p>\n
Heta was sentenced in February this year to seven years and three months in prison.<\/p>\n
One of his co-defendants was dealt with separately by the court and was sentenced to five years in jail.<\/p>\n
The other three have still not been identified. <\/p>\n
Sentence \u2018manifestly excessive\u2019<\/p>\n
Heta appealed against the length of his prison sentence, arguing that it was \u201cmanifestly excessive\u201d because the sentencing judge had not given him enough credit for his deprived childhood.<\/p>\n
Heta\u2019s lawyers argued that Heta had experienced \u201csevere deprivation and disadvantage\u201d from a young age.<\/p>\n
His wh\u0101ngai mother died when he was very young, and he was put in foster care.<\/p>\n
Disconnected from his wh\u0101nau and in the company of other youths in care from gang backgrounds, he joined a gang when he was 15 or 16.<\/p>\n
He had what the appeal court justices called a \u201crelatively persistent criminal history\u201d from an early age, including violence, dishonesty, driving and non-compliance offences.<\/p>\n
He has received multiple prison sentences.<\/p>\n
Justices Christine French, Pheroze Jagose and Ian Gault noted that Heta was 38 when he committed the Rotorua robbery.<\/p>\n
They agreed with the sentencing judge that Heta\u2019s background provided a rational explanation for his early participation in group offending.<\/p>\n
The Court of Appeal found Raymond Heta’s sentence was not manifestly excessive. Photo \/ NZME<\/p>\n
They also noted the information before the judge, identifying Heta\u2019s long-term gang associations.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut Mr Heta\u2019s background does not explain his continued participation in violent offending into his middle years,\u201d the Court of Appeal judgment said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAny discount on the basis of Mr Heta\u2019s background accordingly must be constrained. <\/p>\n
\u201cGiven his relatively continuous violent offending, other sentencing purposes, such as holding him accountable for the harm he has done and protecting the community, must then take precedence.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Court of Appeal determined that Heta\u2019s sentence was not manifestly excessive and dismissed his appeal. <\/p>\n
Ric Stevens spent many years working for the former New Zealand Press Association news agency, including as a political reporter at Parliament, before holding senior positions at various daily newspapers. He joined NZME\u2019s Open Justice team in 2022 and is based in Hawke\u2019s Bay. His writing in the crime and justice sphere is informed by four years of frontline experience as a probation officer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The group then punched and kicked the man. When he tried to fend them off, they stabbed him…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":801,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[74,1343,89,1344,1348,1332,1342,1328,1333,1331,293,1345,1334,101,1340,1329,111,43,139,69,1338,1341,1330,1336,1327,1346,1335,61,1337,1347,1339],"class_list":["post-800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-after","tag-associates","tag-attack","tag-attacked","tag-cellphone","tag-fails","tag-five","tag-gang","tag-get","tag-heta","tag-his","tag-home","tag-jail","tag-left","tag-legs","tag-member","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-paraplegic","tag-permanently","tag-raymond","tag-reduced","tag-rotorua","tag-stole","tag-term","tag-to","tag-victim","tag-wallet","tag-without"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800","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=800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}