Hall v The King
[2025] NZCA 111
•11 April 2025 at 9.30 am
| IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF NEW ZEALAND I TE KŌTI PĪRA O AOTEAROA |
| CA797/2024 |
| BETWEEN | JAMES LEE HALL |
| AND | THE KING |
| Court: | Katz, Brewer and Gault JJ |
Counsel: | Applicant in person |
Judgment: | 11 April 2025 at 9.30 am |
JUDGMENT OF THE COURT
AThe application for an extension of time is granted.
B The application for leave to appeal is declined.
____________________________________________________________________
REASONS OF THE COURT
(Given by Katz J)
Introduction
Following a judge-alone trial in the District Court, Mr Hall was found guilty of two charges of intimidation.[1] Judge Barkle sentenced him to 100 hours of community work and ordered him to make an emotional harm payment of $250 each to the two complainants.[2]
[1]R v Hall [2024] NZDC 21468 [conviction judgment].
[2]R v Hall [2024] NZDC 24699 [sentencing judgment].
Mr Hall unsuccessfully appealed his conviction and sentence to the High Court.[3] He now applies for leave to bring a second appeal against conviction and sentence. The Crown opposes leave.
[3]Hall v R [2024] NZHC 3371 [High Court judgment].
Mr Hall’s application is two days out of time.[4] The Crown does not oppose an extension of time. The delay is short and causes no prejudice to the respondent. An extension of time is granted accordingly.
Leave to bring a second appeal — legal principles
[4]Criminal Procedure Act 2011, ss 239 and 255.
This Court must not grant leave for a second appeal unless satisfied that the appeal involves a matter of general or public importance, or a miscarriage of justice may have occurred, or may occur unless the appeal is heard.[5] The threshold is high; an appeal is unlikely to give rise to an issue of general or public importance unless it raises an issue of general principle or of general importance in the administration of the criminal law, including one that has broad application beyond the circumstances of the particular case.[6]
[5]Sections 237(2) and 253(3).
[6]McAllister v R [2014] NZCA 175, [2014] 2 NZLR 764 at [36], citing Keenan v R [2005] NZSC 63 at [5].
The Court will be slow to grant leave where success for an applicant would require the court to reverse concurrent findings of fact below. This will be particularly so where the trial was before a judge alone, because the appellant has had the benefit of two judgments giving reasons for those factual findings.[7] The Court will generally be expected to decline leave where the appeal concerns issues that have been thoroughly traversed by the lower courts.[8]
The offending
[7]R (CA176/2016) v Police [2016] NZCA 403 at [26], citing Butler v Police [2016] NZCA 27 at [3] and Warren v R [2016] NZCA 108 at [30].
[8]Wells v R [2015] NZCA 528.
The first complainant, Ms Woodger, lived in the same cul-de-sac as Mr Hall and his family from March 2019 to October 2023. The second complainant, Mr Allen, was Ms Woodger’s partner.
The relationship between the neighbours deteriorated from mid-January 2023 onwards. On 17 June 2023, Ms Woodger returned to her home. Mr Allen was either accompanying her or arrived shortly after. Ms Woodger walked up her driveway and onto her deck. Mr Hall was sweeping the road at the bottom of the cul-de-sac. He yelled abuse and threatened a number of things, including that Ms Woodger was “a bipolar bitch”. He said that she should “kill herself”, and that if she did not, he “would do it”. As he said this, he held up a broom and pretended to fire it like a gun at her, making gunshot sounds. Mr Hall said to Mr Allen “I’m waiting for you to leave mate, I’m going to fuck you up”. This threat was recorded on a cell phone.
Ms Woodger asked her son to video Mr Allen when he was leaving the property. The video shows Mr Hall standing behind a high fence on his property, yelling and waving an item (alleged to be a small axe by Mr Allen and Ms Woodger’s son, although this was not accepted by Mr Hall). Mr Allen returned shortly afterwards and went and hid in the bushes alongside Ms Woodger’s property, where he was able to hear other threatening remarks from Mr Hall. The next day Ms Woodger saw her CCTV camera on the garage door had been damaged and broken.
The High Court decision
Mr Hall was self-represented in the High Court.[9] He did not file any written submissions in support of his appeal. Based on his oral submissions, however, McQueen J identified the following grounds of appeal:[10] there was insufficient evidence to convict; the judge was biased; the amendment of the charges was improper; private video recordings were wrongly accepted as evidence; there is new evidence that should be before the Court (affidavits of Mr and Mrs Hall with various attachments); and the sentence was unfair because it was one event but two charges.
[9]He is also self-represented in this Court.
[10]High Court judgment, above n 3, at [25].
The Judge rejected the two affidavits Mr Hall sought to file as further evidence in support of his appeal as being neither fresh nor cogent. She noted that even if they had been accepted, they would not have changed the outcome at trial.[11]
[11]At [33].
The Judge ultimately concluded that there was no merit in any of the grounds of appeal. The appeal was accordingly dismissed.
Proposed grounds of appeal
Mr Hall’s proposed grounds of appeal to this Court appear to be, in essence, that:
(a)The affidavits he and his wife wished to file in the High Court should have been admitted and would support his proposed appeal.
(b)The video and audio recordings of the incident should not have been admitted at trial as they breached his right to privacy and his human rights and were therefore unlawfully obtained.
(c)The complainants committed perjury as their statements were contradictory to the evidence given in court, largely due to the discrepancies between whether Mr Hall was on the street, or behind the fence.
Should leave to bring a further appeal be granted?
In our view, the criteria for leave to bring a second appeal are not met. There is no apparent risk of a miscarriage of justice. Nor does the proposed appeal appear to raise any seriously arguable issues of general or public importance. Mr Hall is largely seeking to relitigate the arguments he advanced in his unsuccessful appeal to the High Court. The outcome of any appeal would likely turn on the facts of this specific case. More specifically:
(a)The approach to “fresh evidence” on appeal is well settled.[12] The overriding test is whether it is in the interests of justice to admit that evidence.[13] The evidence must be: (i) sufficiently fresh (in that it could not with reasonable diligence have been called previously); (ii) sufficiently credible; and (iii) cogent in that it might reasonably have led to a different outcome. Here, the affidavits of Mr and Mrs Hall were not fresh, as the relevant evidence could have been given at trial. Nor was the evidence cogent — there is nothing to suggest that it would have changed the outcome at trial. No error arises from the High Court’s decision not to admit this evidence on appeal.
(b)Mr Hall does not appear to have challenged the admissibility of the video and audio recording evidence at trial. He seeks to argue in a second appeal that the evidence was inadmissible as the recordings breached his right to privacy. Mr Hall has not provided any case law to support such a proposition. In any event, the argument appears to lack merit.
(c)The “perjury” proposed ground of appeal also lacks merit. We also note that it relies almost entirely on Mr and Mrs Hall’s inadmissible affidavit evidence. The complainants gave evidence at trial and were subject to cross-examination. To the extent that there were any inconsistencies in their evidence (as is common in criminal trials) Mr Hall had an opportunity to fully test any such inconsistencies through cross‑examination.
[12]R v Lundy [2013] UKPC 28, [2014] 2 NZLR 273 at [116]–[126].
[13]At [116], citing R v Crime Appeal (CA60/88) (1988) 3 CRNZ 512 (CA) at 513.
Mr Hall does not identify any specific grounds in support of his proposed sentence appeal. The sentence does not, however, appear to be manifestly excessive.
Result
The application for an extension of time is granted.
The application for leave to appeal is declined.
Solicitors:
Crown Law Office | Te Tari Ture o te Karauna, Wellington for Respondent
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