A police prosecutor who sold methamphetamine during his lunch break and passed information from police files has asked for his prison sentence to be quashed.
Timothy John Russell Sarah was an Auckland District Court prosecutor who was arrested when police cracked a drug ring in 2011, laying drugs charges against 22 people.
The 37-year-old was jailed in May for four years after pleading guilty to five charges, including supplying methamphetamine and dishonestly accessing the police intelligence computer system to get confidential information.
His lawyer Ron Mansfield this week told the Court of Appeal that the prison term was "manifestly excessive" in the circumstances and his client should have been sentenced to home detention.
He argued that although Sarah passed information to targets in Operation Ark - such as whether police were making checks on individuals, therefore indicating an interest in them - he was unaware that they were suspects in an ongoing investigation.