The Court of Appeal has upheld a sentence of life imprisonment with a minimum of 14 years non-parole for a Hawke's Bay teenager's drunken killing of a man at Haumoana.
The appeal was on behalf of Johnnie Puna, who was 19 when he murdered 45-year-old father of two Mark Geoffrey Beale on the beach at the Tukituki River mouth on the night of February 5, 2017.
The body was found next the next morning. Puna pled not guilty to a charge of murder, though conceded he had been involved in the assaults.
He was found guilty at the end of a High Court trial in Napier last year and sentenced in February this year.
An appeal was heard on September 3 and a judgment delivered on Tuesday.