The whāngai father of a murdered woman felt “overwhelming rage” as her killer stood in front of him in a courtroom, separated from him by a 1.8-metre glass wall.
Graham Mokaraka, still mourning the loss of his daughter Arohaina Henare, had not even planned to be at the court hearing.
Mokaraka went to the Napier courthouse on September 11, 2023, only to hand over some car keys to other members of Arohaina’s family who had gathered in the courtroom’s public gallery.
Arohaina’s murderer, Moses Taua, who had stabbed the 34-year-old mother to death the previous November, had not been expected to be there either.
The family had been led to believe he would appear for a procedural hearing in the High Court via an audio-visual link from prison.
Yet, there he was, in the dock immediately in front of the gallery where family members were seated.
The half-hour hearing was nearly over and the lawyers and the judge were discussing Taua’s background.
When Mokaraka heard Taua described as partly a “victim of circumstances” in terms of his own upbringing, he became angry.
He used the handle of a glass door in the barrier as a foothold and then scaled over the top, jumping down into the courtroom and moving towards the dock.
A Corrections officer tried to stop him, in the process ripping Mokaraka’s shirt from him, but the officer fell in a twisting motion, leaving him with a broken kneecap and other injuries.
Shirtless, Mokaraka began raining blows on to Taua, who was handcuffed and trapped in the dock.
After police and security officers dragged him off, they sat him in the otherwise empty jury box, where he lit a cigarette.
By then three other family members had followed Mokaraka over the barrier to join in the attack on Taua.
Two of them were Arohaina’s twin sons, Trizarn and Cylus, 18 years old at the time.
The twins, neither of whom had been in trouble with the law before, later pleaded guilty to assault with intent to injure.
They were sentenced to 12 months of supervision and 150 hours of community service.
The fourth family member to scale the barrier has since died, adding to the whānau’s trauma, which was acknowledged by Judge Richard Earwaker in the Napier District Court at Mokaraka’s sentencing today.
Mokaraka, 55, stood in the same dock in the same courtroom for sentencing after admitting charges of assault with intent to injure on Taua and aggravated assault of the Corrections officer.
The judge said Mokaraka had described to a report writer an “overwhelming rage” coming over him as he heard Taua’s background discussed.
He also said Mokaraka had been unable to attend the funeral of the young woman he raised, because he had been in custody for another violent offence and had been denied compassionate leave from prison.
“Your family has been through a tremendous ordeal as a result of all this and I can’t ignore that fact,” Judge Earwaker said.
But he added that a balance had to be struck between that and ensuring the decorum of court was maintained – a decorum and dignity that Crown Solicitor Steve Manning said had been “trashed” by what had happened.
“This was clearly vigilante justice which you were seeking to mete out, which can in no way be condoned or accepted,” Judge Earwaker said.
He said Taua had been vulnerable in the dock, and was subjected to multiple attackers.
Mokaraka also had a history of violence which could not be ignored.
Judge Earwaker sentenced him to 12 months of home detention.
The judge said sending him to prison would increase the family’s trauma, and Mokaraka had shown a willingness to engage in the process of rehabilitation.
He said Taua was not badly hurt in the melee but the Corrections officer had been significantly impacted. He had only recently been able to return to work.
Mokaraka’s counsel, Matt Dixon, had argued for home detention, saying his client had made “more than an average attempt” to turn his life around.
In October last year, Moses Taua was sentenced to life imprisonment with no parole for 10 years for the murder of Arohaina Henare, a mother of six, who lived in a sleepout on the property where he was living.
After a day of drinking and using methamphetamine and cannabis, Taua confronted her in the sleepout in the early hours of November 18, 2022, because of a dispute in which he had asked her to move out.
The courts have been told Henare shoved Taua’s partner during a disagreement earlier.
“How dare you put your hands on my missus,” Taua said to Henare as he swung a knife into her chest.
Mokaraka raised Arohaina after her mother was killed in a car crash when she was three years old.
Manning said to “all intents and purposes”, he was her father.
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.
Once proud and hard-working, most Māori have no meaningful mahi.