KEY POINTS:
A convict is fighting to keep $21,040 seized during his arrest four years ago.
The cash was found with quantities of cocaine and methamphetamine in a car driven by John Wharemako Gillies that police stopped at the southern end of the Waipawa bridge in Hawkes Bay after a 13km chase on May 29, 2004.
At his trial a year later, Gillies, who is now 38 and has spent about 17 of the past 20 years in prison, claimed he had just snatched the cash and drugs from a dealer in Hastings.
He was found guilty of possessing the drugs for the purpose of supply, and of aggravated assault on a policeman.
With no evidence the cash came from any drug dealing by him, the judge made no order for its forfeiture.
But it has never been handed back, staying in police hands while Gillies serves his seven years and the remainder of a 12-year sentence for stabbing a policeman in 1993.
The Crown has now applied to have the money placed in the Government's Consolidated Fund. Gillies has objected and, when barrister Tony Snell appeared on his behalf in the High Court in Napier this week, Justice Rhys Harrison scheduled a hearing to decide the matter on September 23 - the time Gillies becomes eligible to apply for parole.
At the trial in 2005, Gillies, previously a recipient of five-figure compensation for physical abuse by prison officers while in jail, said a drug dealer, whom he would not identify, "took all my money ... so I took some of his", money which Gillies said was for his children.
At the time, Gillies was on parole after serving almost 10 years of a 12-year sentence for the attempted murder of police officer Nigel Hendrikse, whom he stabbed with a screwdriver.
- HAWKE'S BAY TODAY
