New Zealand Case Law: Decisions & Judgments | LexChat

Topic

Mitigating and aggravating factors in sentencing

Legal area

Court

26 May 2020

MALAPAKA v NEW ZEALAND POLICE [2020] NZHC 1121

Citation

[2020] NZHC 1121
Court

High Court

The High Court upheld the District Court's refusal to discharge without conviction because the offending was at the lower end of moderate to serious and the likely consequences of conviction (including a real risk of deportation and impaired employment prospects) were not out of all proportion to that gravity, so the statutory threshold for discharge under s106/s107 was not met.
22 Aug 2019

DIRECTOR OF THE CIVIL AVIATION AUTHORITY v BACH [2019] NZHC 2062

Citation

[2019] NZHC 2062
Court

High Court

The High Court granted leave but found a legal error in the District Court's gravity assessment: the Judge failed to take into account a relevant aggravating factor (the respondent's attempts to suppress/persuade concealment of incriminating GoPro footage), which was an error of law. However the Court concluded on the merits that, despite that error, the overall assessment of consequences of conviction relative to the now-assessed gravity still justified a discharge without conviction; leave granted, appeal dismissed and discharge upheld.