Miramar tyre slasher's prison sentence quashed after appealing

David Francis Johns had a strong sense of entitlement, Justice France said. Photo / Facebook

A disgruntled Miramar resident who slashed car tyres to discourage people from parking in residential streets then heading to the airport has had his prison sentence quashed.

David Francis Johns, 53, was earlier this year sentenced to 22 months in prison for using two sharpened screwdrivers to stab the tyres of cars parked in the Wellington suburb.

Johns, who carried out his vigilante actions under the cover of darkness, had pleaded guilty to a representative charge of intentional damage and one count of possessing an offensive weapon.

Johns appealed the prison sentence, and in a High Court decision released this afternoon, Justice Simon France quashed the sentence and replaced it with one of community detention, community work, and supervision.

Justice France labelled the offending "low-level" and the original sentence starting point "excessive by a considerable margin".

He said Johns was a Miramar resident "annoyed by the parking situation."

"For some time there has been concern amongst some residents of Miramar about the number of cars being parked in the streets and how they were being parked," Justice France said.

"A major contributor to the number of cars is the nearby airport with travellers parking there before heading off on their travels."

He said the common themes in Johns' descriptions of his motives were annoyance, his hope of deterring people from parking there, and a desire to force the Wellington City Council into action.

There were 101 identified victims who collectively spent about $20,000 to fix the damage to their tyres.

Justice France said the way the sentencing was handled "focuses too much on the number of victims and the vigilante motives (always to be discouraged) and strays too far from the relatively minor nature of the offending".

He said while Johns did not have a mental illness, he had "distinctive psychological traits" that contributed to the offending, which he could receive help for.

They included "his strong sense of entitlement, and cognitive distortions that enable him to convince himself these were victimless crimes".

"There are a lot of mixed messages emerging from Mr Johns. A times he shows insight and realises he went too far; at other times there is bravado and what seems arrogance, no doubt reflective of this sense of entitlement he feels."

Justice France said the amount of time Johns had already served represented five and a half months' imprisonment.

He cancelled the prison sentence and imposed a sentence of four months community detention, 250 hours of community work, and supervision for a maximum of 12 months.