The Court of Appeal has quashed life sentences imposed on three young convicted murderers.<\/p>\n
In a judgment released today, it ruled the sentences unjust and replaced them with set terms of prison and shorter minimum periods.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0appeals<\/a>\u00a0were seen as test cases for sentencing young people – all three were aged under 20 when they committed the offences.<\/p>\n The court said its decision did not set a precedent, and creating laws for sentencing young people was a task for Parliament.<\/p>\n However, it found life sentences were hard for young people to grasp; that the 10-year minimum terms imposed on the three killers could exacerbate the adverse effects of prison; and that subjecting the three to possible recall to jail for the rest of their lives could be unjust.<\/p>\n The three killers are Christopher James Brown and Georgia Rose Dickey,\u00a0convicted of murdering 19-year-old Jack McAllister<\/a>\u00a0in Invercargill in 2017, and Katrina Roma Epiha,\u00a0convicted for the murder of Maree Nathan<\/a>\u00a0at a Christchurch house party that year.<\/p>\n Brown was 19 at the time of the killing and Dickey 16. Epiha was 18.<\/p>\n Instead of life sentences, Dickey was sentenced to 15 years’ jail, with a minimum term of seven years and six months; Brown 12 years, with a minimum term of six years; and Epiha 13 years, with a minimum term of seven years.<\/p>\n The court said it was mindful of Sentencing Act requirements that young people convicted of murder serve life sentences, unless it was unjust.<\/p>\n “The Children’s Commissioner suggested, and some of the appellants’ [lawyers] submitted we should create a special category for young persons,” the judgment said.<\/p>\n “We must, however, not trespass upon Parliament’s domain… Our judgment does not have the effect of creating a special category for young persons convicted of murder.”<\/p>\n Although being a youth was not by itself enough to establish an injustice to avoid a life sentence, mitigating circumstances of the offending and an offender’s personal circumstances could count on top of their age, the court said.<\/p>\n The appeals were heard in July. The court had reserved its decision.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Court of Appeal has quashed life sentences imposed on three young convicted murderers. In a judgment released today, it ruled the sentences unjust and replaced them with set terms of prison and shorter minimum periods. The\u00a0appeals\u00a0were seen as test cases for sentencing young people – all three were aged under 20 when they committed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2582,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2581"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2581\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2584,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2581\/revisions\/2584"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}