Editorial: Hamilton has earned his sentence

Hugh Edward Staples Hamilton

There are many people in Hawke's Bay and the rest of the country who lost their life savings when the finance companies they invested in collapsed.

Some of them had to return to work at an older age, others have suffered from ill health and still more are consumed by despair and bitterness.

It would be a sickening feeling to lose money that you have slogged your whole life to earn.

That is why it is good that the Court of Appeal has rejected a challenge by former Central Hawke's Bay mayor Hugh Edward Staples Hamilton to reduce the length of his jail sentence.

Hamilton, who did legal work for failed finance company Belgrave, was in May last year found guilty on 14 charges of theft by a person in a special relationship and jailed later that year. He was found to have intentionally facilitated crime by providing legal help and has failed to reduce the length of his jail sentence.

What makes Hamilton's offending even worse is that he was a pillar of the community, having served as CHB mayor for six years and been Waipukurau Rotary Club president as well.

His lawyers challenged the length of his jail sentence of four years and nine months, telling the Court of Appeal the sentence should have been "significantly lower". The argument was that the starting point the judge took of five years in jail should have been three years and the reduction Hamilton received for his "extensive community involvement and previous good character" was far too small.

I disagree. People trusted him and he failed them.

Now he must do the time.