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A Masterton police officer found guilty of assaulting a man with pepper spray had his conviction quashed by a judge in the High Court at Wellington yesterday and his name suppression lifted.
Peter Kenneth Jackson, a police dog handler from Masterton, had been convicted of assault using pepper spray by Wellington District Court Judge Michael Behrens three weeks after a hearing in October.
He was fined $500 and $130 in costs.
Mr Jackson had denied assaulting Ben Viane when arresting him on March 12 in Masterton. Mr Viane was drunk and had allegedly been violent at a party that night.
Yesterday, Justice John Wild said Mr Viane accepted he could not remember if he had heard Mr Jackson tell him he was under arrest and accepted he had tried to step around the police officer.
Mr Jackson's lawyer, Noel Sainsbury, said his client used the spray because he was dealing with a man, bare from the waist up, believed to have been violent.
Mr Sainsbury said Mr Jackson was protecting himself, his colleagues and Mr Viane himself by temporarily disabling him with pepper spray.
Prosecutor Gary Turkington told the court that the use of pepper spray in the circumstances was "gratuitous". He said crown evidence was that Mr Viane was submissive.
Justice Wild said Judge Behrens had found Mr Jackson's evidence was not credible so had dismissed it.
He had done the same, looking only at the evidence of the three prosecution witnesses.
He said Mr Viane's evidence conflicted with that of the police officers and it was impossible to reconcile the two.
- NZPA
