R v Heenan HC Rotorua CRI-2009-063-3966

[2011] NZHC 175

IN THE HIGH COURT OF NEW ZEALAND ROTORUA REGISTRY

CRI-2009-063-3966

THE QUEEN

v

CHRISTOPHER ALLAN HEENAN

Counsel:         F Pilditch and A J Gordon for Crown

J Bergseng and O J Brittain for Prisoner

Judgment:      3 March 2011

SENTENCING NOTES OF BREWER J

SOLICITORS

Gordon Pilditch (Rotorua) for Crown

Bergseng & Co (Tauranga) for Accused

[1]       Mr  Heenan,  you  have  been  found  guilty  by  a  jury  of  the  murder  of

Mr Raukawa Newton.  What you actually did can be told very shortly.

R V HEENAN (SENTENCING) HC ROT CRI-2009-063-3966 3 March 2011

[2]      Mr  Newton  was  drinking  with  you  at  your  home  on  11 October  2007. Mr Newton, as he would do when he had had too much to drink, became quite flamboyant.  He reached into the spiritual realm of his life and culture and began to invoke the Maori Gods or to speak to what he regarded as the higher plane.

[3]      You were drunk.  You objected to what he was doing.  Mr Newton persisted. You flew into a violent rage.  You took a knife and you stabbed Mr Newton from behind, reaching around his side to do so.  You punctured his aorta and within a very few minutes Mr Newton was dead.

[4]      The determination you showed in stabbing Mr Newton is evident from the notched  appearance  of  the  wound.     Either  you  held  the  knife  firmly  inside Mr Newton as he struggled against it or you repeatedly inserted the knife into the wound.

[5]      Your attack on Mr Newton was all over very quickly but the reason it has taken so long for your responsibility for Mr Newton’s death to be resolved was because of your intent to avoid that responsibility.  You stabbed yourself repeatedly so as to make it look as though Mr Newton had attacked you.  You claimed to have been acting in self-defence.  You claimed to have little or no memory of events so that all the authorities could do was go on the physical evidence.  That prolonged the investigation and added to the ordeal for Mr Newton’s family, and indeed for your own.

[6]      I have read the victim impact statements which have been filed by members of Mr Newton’s family.   They all speak of a man who was greatly respected and loved.  They speak of the deprivation, the loss, which is now being experienced by his mother, his partner, his children and his siblings.

[7]      Both the Crown and the Defence have made submissions to me on what the law requires me to do at this point, and I accept what they say.  The sentence I have to impose on you is the one which I am required to impose as a matter of law.   I make the point very clearly that the sentence that I am to impose is not intended to compensate for Mr Newton’s death.  It could not.  No sentence that I can impose can

compensate for Mr Newton’s death.   This is instead a response to Mr Newton’s

death as the law requires it.

[8]      In your case the law is very clear.   It requires me to impose a sentence of imprisonment for life.  Life imprisonment means just that.  Unless the Parole Board in some future year decides that it is reasonable and safe for you to return to the community then you never will.  If the Parole Board does decide to release you at some future time you would always, for the rest of your life, be on parole and so any further offending would mean that you would be recalled to custody to continue to serve the sentence of life imprisonment.

[9]      The law also requires me to order that you serve a minimum term of imprisonment; in other words, I must specify the period for which you must be held in prison before the Parole Board can make its first assessment of whether you should  be released  on  parole.    I have to  consider the purposes  of holding  you accountable  for  what  you  have  done,  denouncing  what  you  have  done,  and protecting the community.  I therefore fix the minimum period of imprisonment at

10 years.

[10]     Accordingly, you are sentenced to imprisonment for life with a minimum term of imprisonment of 10 years.  Stand down.

Brewer J