Legal experts dismiss claims of racism in Awatere sentence

Legal experts have dismissed claims of racial bias in the sentencing of Donna Awatere Huata and her husband Wi.

At the Auckland District Court yesterday, Awatere Huata was given a two year, nine month jail term for defrauding funds from the Maori children's reading trust, the Pipi Foundation.

Wi Huata received two years and has been given leave to apply for home detention.

Their supporters claim they are the victims of race-based sentencing, but Professor Bill Hodge from Auckland University told Newstalk ZB today that race had no role in the sentencing and if anything, Awatere Huata's sentence is on the light side.

He says considering the breach of trust and Awatere Huata's prior record, there was nothing surprising about it at all.

Professor Hodge says if anything the Huatas' race would have counted in their favour, although that does not appear to have happened.

An Auckland QC also says convicted former Act MP Donna Awatere Huata's jail term is appropriate for the offence.

Grant Ellingworth QC told National Radio today the sentences were reasonable.

He said: "The judge will get a feel for the upper and lower limits of the range and then will decide whereabouts this case should come within that range and I would have thought this was a fairly middle-of-the-range outcome for a case of this kind."

However, solicitor Annette Sykes claims the sentence is not in line with a Rotorua sentencing this week, where a millionaire businessman received 12 months for fraud, with leave to apply for home detention.

Ms Sykes says the case proves justice is not colour blind. She says the couples' sentence did not take into account factors the new Sentencing Act provides for.

Legal Aid of more than $19,000 was granted to Wi Huata but not his wife, according to a newspaper report. An investigation into the couple's eligibility for legal aid was not complete.

Act Party leader Rodney Hide said the sentence affirmed his party's actions in suspending Awatere Huata before she was expelled last November.

"We moved firmly and fairly on Donna and we took a lot of flak for doing so but Donna's behaved poorly, badly, dishonestly and she's had her day in court and she's been sentenced," he told National Radio today.

Public outcry in court yesterday forced the judge to postpone proceedings.

Wi Huata's sibling Hira Huata stood up in the public gallery and accused the court of administering "white man's justice". The comments were followed by a haka until police arrived.

Prominent Maori figures in the gallery included Dr Pita Sharples and Hone Harawira.

Outside the court another relative Huia Huata said a prison term was not fair for Awatere Huata.

"She should have come out on community work. She doesn't deserve to go to prison."

The Huatas were described by Judge Roderick Joyce as callous and calculating in the way they stole from the Maori trust -- but even worse were their attempts to cover the crime, which displayed a "Machiavellian enterprise".

He said Awatere Huata suffered beyond the sentence.

"The higher one's foothold on fame, the greater the fall and the worse the injury," he said.

Defence lawyer Roy Wade said: "Seldom can there have been such a devastating fall from grace in the public arena."

- NZPA