R v Te Huna [2017] NZDC 23813 (17 October 2017)

Last Updated: 18 May 2018

EDITORIAL NOTE: CHANGES MADE TO THIS JUDGMENT APPEAR IN [SQUARE BRACKETS].

NOTE: PUBLICATION OF NAME(S), ADDRESS(ES), OCCUPATION(S) OR IDENTIFYING PARTICULARS, OF COMPLAINANT(S) PROHIBITED BY S 203 OF THE CRIMINAL PROCEDURE ACT 2011.

IN THE DISTRICT COURT AT NAPIER

CRI-2016-020-000368

[2017] NZDC 23813 THREE STRIKE WARNING

THE QUEEN

v

SHAUN RANGATU TE HUNA

Hearing:	17 October 2017
Appearances:	S Manning for the Crown R Eagles for the Defendant
Judgment:	17 October 2017

NOTES OF JUDGE A J ADEANE ON SENTENCING

[1] Mr Te Huna has been found guilty by a jury of a single count of sexual violation by rape. Rape is three strike offence so Mr Te Huna I am now obliged to give you the following warning.

[2] On the commission of a first three strike offence you will be sentenced according to the circumstances and receive parole in the normal way. If, thereafter, you should commit a second three strike offence, you will be sentenced according to the circumstances of your offending but receive no parole. If, thereafter, you commit a third three strike offence, you will not be sentenced in this Court but committed to

R v SHAUN RANGATU TE HUNA [2017] NZDC 23813 THREE STRIKE WARNING [17 October 2017]

the High Court where absent special circumstances, and you would be sentenced to the maximum term which the law allows, to be served without parole. You will be served with written notice of these matters before you leave.

[3] The facts are that many years ago you were socialising in [location deleted]. So too was the complainant, a 21 year old woman who was attending the 21st birthday of a friend. You may have had some brief contact with her during the evening but nothing more. She became heavily intoxicated and returned to her friend’s home where she crashed for want of a better term on a mattress on a couch. As so often happens in small provincial towns, you were circulating in the area that night, became aware that this party had moved home. You were there with friends and the evidence established to the jury’s satisfaction that you secretively went to the place where this young woman was sleeping, and whilst she slept and was unconscious of what you were doing let alone consenting to it, you had full sexual intercourse with her. She was aware of this the next day and obviously traumatised by it but nothing further by way of progress was made in the resulting police complaint and enquiries until a DNA hit on you many years down the track.

[4] The evidence was therefore conclusive that you had had sexual intercourse with this young woman, and you, and in particular your counsel, was left with the rather difficult defence task of persuading the jury of the possibility that although you could not remember doing so, you might have had intercourse with this young woman with her consent, or with a reasonable belief that she was consenting, at some time otherwise in the evening than at a time when she was unconscious and completely incapable of consenting. The resulting verdict would have come as no surprise to anyone familiar with matters of the kind.

[5] The complainant did have to give evidence. These are circumstances which would have a long term effect as one might understand on a modest young woman and she still remains as her victim statement demonstrates, horrified by the predicament into which she got herself but in which you were a principle precipitating party.

[6] There is now a great deal of structure around sentencing of matters of the kind (R v AM1). In my view, your offending fits within the mid to upper end of band 1 in that case. Care should be taken around straining for aggravating features in what is, by definition, already a highly aggravated offence.

[7] You, at 37 years of age, are in a position where you can now show that your very short criminal history ended 15 years ago and not insignificantly in my view, roundabout concurrently with this offending. You are now a very different citizen from the one you were then. You have established a family and a good reputation in the working community.

[8] The ironic workings of historic DNA are now throwing up cases where retribution on the one hand and redemption on the other are uncomfortably juxtaposed and your case is one of those.

[9] It has to be said for you that of your own volition, you have achieved in the intervening period, precisely what society would have hoped to have achieved by penal means had the matter been dealt with at the time.

[10] In the circumstances and although it is unorthodox, in my view, a substantial discount from a starting point of seven years’ imprisonment can be made, and you are accordingly, sentenced to five years’ imprisonment.

A J Adeane

District Court Judge

1 R v AM [2010] NZCA 114, [2010] 2 NZLR 750, (2010) 24 CRNZ 540