KEY POINTS:
A High Court judge has condemned the high rate of domestic homicides, saying a man who beat to death his partner of 12 years deserved a "significant loading" of his sentence to denounce such crimes.
Justice John Priestley sentenced Joseph Kengike to 10 years' jail with a five-year minimum parole period for the manslaughter of Moana Kapua, the mother of his six children.
The Crown had asked for a 10-year sentence for Kengike but Justice Priestley said the starting point should be higher - 12 1/2 years - because the 29-year-old had a history of violence and had killed Ms Kapua while on bail for assaulting her and despite a non-association order.
The judge sentenced Kengike in the High Court at Rotorua on Friday and has since asked the Herald to publish his ruling, which strongly condemns domestic killings.
"I believe the problem of domestic violence in New Zealand leading to the death of a vulnerable or protected partner now requires a stern start point," the judge said.
"It would be surprising if the Court of Appeal disagreed."
Justice Priestley referred to police statistics on domestic violence in the ruling, saying one woman was killed by her partner or former partner every five weeks.
A United Nations report had also shown that half of all homicides of New Zealand women were committed by partners or ex-partners.
"Those are grim figures which in my view justify a significant loading of your sentence to reflect the purposes of denunciation and deterrence," Justice Priestley told Kengike.
The judge said New Zealand's rates of domestic violence towards women were unacceptable and Kengike's sentence was necessary to deter other male offenders.
"Women should be protected not abused," he said. Men who killed their female partners must expect fitting and deserved punishment from courts.
"The seriousness and prevalence of this offending requires such a judicial response."
Kengike hit and kicked Ms Kapua in a sustained assault at her home in Tokoroa on November 18, 2005.
She was found 30 hours later, deeply unconscious with injuries including a fractured eye socket, soft tissue injuries around her neck and a boot print on her abdomen. She had suffered two subdural haemorrhages which led to her death in Auckland City Hospital on November 22.
Ms Kapua and Kengike were separated and she had a protection order against him. He had arrived in Tokoroa from south Auckland to face charges of breaching that order and inflicting an earlier assault on Ms Kapua when he inflicted the fatal beating.
He had four convictions for assaulting women and had twice breached protection orders, leading to two stints in prison.
Justice Priestley said Kengike had "offended constantly" since 1995 and his killing of Ms Kapua was a "classic example of extreme lethal violence in a domestic context".
"Fifty years ago most New Zealanders would regard a man who hit a woman with closed fists as a despicable coward," he said.
"And kicking people, particularly when they were down on the ground, was also regarded as cowardly.
"Your uncontrolled and drunken anger that night has ended the life of a woman well before her time and has deprived your six children of their mother."
Kengike was charged with murder but found guilty of manslaughter by a jury.
The judge was satisfied Kengike, who had consumed a large amount of alcohol, lacked murderous intent but deliberately inflicted the beating.
He gave Kengike a discount of 2 1/2 years from the 12 1/2 year starting point because Kengike had indicated he would be prepared to plead guilty to manslaughter.
But Justice Priestley was not satisfied that the minimum non-parole period of one-third of a sentence under the Parole Act would be sufficient.
"This is a homicide. This is a serious homicide. There were significant aggravating factors," he said.
He imposed a minimum non-parole period of five years rather than the three years, four months Kengike would normally have been eligible for on a 10-year sentence.
