R v Takamore

In the High Court of New Zealand, the case of R v Takamore involved a re-sentencing application by the Department of Corrections to substitute the defendant's home detention sentence with imprisonment due to the unavailability of a suitable home detention address. The defendant, Aaron Takamore, was originally sentenced to 12 months of home detention for aggravated burglary, with a starting point of five years reduced to four years, and further reduced to 24 months of imprisonment considering various mitigating factors. The Crown recognised that home detention would be appropriate, and it was initially imposed with specific conditions. However, due to changes in the home detention address and breaches by the defendant, the Department sought to re-sentence him to imprisonment.

The legal issues before the court were whether the court could cancel the home detention sentence and substitute it with imprisonment, and if so, how the substituted sentence should be determined. The court considered the statutory provisions allowing for the cancellation and substitution of a sentence if grounds exist, and the need to consider the portion of the original sentence unserved and the appropriateness of the substituted sentence.

The court reasoned that while there must be some proportionality between the original and substituted sentences, there is no strict correlation or mathematical formula to be applied. The substituted sentence must be one that could have been imposed initially, considering the purposes and principles of sentencing. The court noted the defendant's efforts to rehabilitate and the challenges he faced, including the unavailability of an appropriate home detention address and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The court concluded that the defendant had served half of his home detention sentence and should be credited for that, resulting in a substituted sentence of 15 months of imprisonment, with an additional two weeks for outstanding community work. The court granted the Department's application, cancelling the home detention and community work sentences and imposing the substituted sentence of one year, three months and two weeks of imprisonment, with specific release conditions.

The final orders of the court were that Mr Takamore's sentences of home detention and community work were cancelled, and he was sentenced to one year, three months and two weeks of imprisonment, with standard and special release conditions applied as recommended by the Probation Officer.