Wiki’s offending occurred in Hawke’s Bay.
A probation officer’s pre-sentence report said that he had since moved from Napier to Dunedin to address “unsatisfactory aspects” in his life.
Wiki’s assault conviction related to an unprovoked attack on a man he knew in December 2021, when he struck the victim four hard blows to the head with a pair of long-handled pruners. He then smashed the windscreen of his victim’s car using the same weapon.
On January 30, 2022, a Honda Odyssey car was stolen in Napier.
At about 5am on February 2, 2022, Wiki and an associate parked the Honda, which by then had false registration plates, near Just Jeans on Emerson Street in Napier.
Wiki and his associate broke into the store, causing extensive damage to the front door, and stole clothing worth $15,000 and a cash drawer from the till.
Police found the Honda and the clothes stolen from Just Jeans at Wiki’s house.
Wiki was sentenced by District Court Judge Michael Turner, who is based in Dunedin, who began with a starting point of 53 months in prison for all the offences, which he reduced without comment to 36 months.
He noted that Wiki had a troubled background, having been born into a family with close gang involvement and exposure to violence that the judge accepted would have shaped his mindset.
Taking into account Wiki’s guilty plea, rehabilitative steps already taken, seven months on a 24-hour curfew while on bail and six months on a night-time curfew, the judge allowed a 25 per cent discount. This reduced the 36 months in prison to 27 months.
Wiki appealed against this sentence to the High Court on numerous grounds.
Justice Eaton reviewed the sentence and adjusted the starting point to 35 months in prison. With uplifts for Wiki’s prior offending and credits for his personal factors, he arrived at a sentence of 26 months.
He then allowed a further three-month reduction to reflect the time Wiki spent on restrictive bail conditions, leading to an end sentence of 23 months in prison.
This brought the sentence to below the two-year threshold at which home detention can be considered instead of prison.
Justice Eaton said, in considering whether to commute the prison sentence to home detention, he was mindful of Section 16 of the Sentencing Act, which directs judges to consider keeping offenders in the community “as far as that is practicable and consonant with the safety of the community”.
“Most particularly, I am mindful that Mr Wiki is a young man who, having regard to his personal background, is vulnerable,” Justice Eaton said.
“In my view, care needs to be taken to reduce the prospect of Mr Wiki emerging from prison a more hardened criminal than when he was taken into custody.”
Justice Eaton noted that Wiki had already served two months in prison, quashed his jail term, and imposed a new sentence of nine months of home detention.
Before his latest offending, Wiki had accumulated five convictions for disqualified driving and had prior convictions for burglary, failing to answer bail and receiving stolen property.
Ric Stevens spent many years working for the former New Zealand Press Association news agency, including as a political reporter at Parliament, before holding senior positions at various daily newspapers. He joined NZME’s Open Justice team in 2022 and is based in Hawke’s Bay. His writing in the crime and justice sphere is informed by four years of front-line experience as a probation officer.
