We’ve been warned about drink-driving for decades. We’ve had ad campaigns, heart-wrenching stories and endless police crackdowns. You’ll probably recall some of those campaigns: if you drink and drive, you’re a bloody idiot, and ghost chips.
They make the message clear: if you drink and drive, you’re a loaded weapon and can easily kill.
They suggest accountability is non-negotiable. If you get tanked, get behind the wheel and show a calculated yet callous disregard for the safety of others, and kill someone in the process, you should expect serious jail time. The law says you can go to jail for up to 10 years.
But despite the messaging and the law, drunk drivers know in New Zealand it has to get pretty serious and repetitive before judges consider jailing them. It seems the “mitigating factors” that might lessen a sentence come before the rights of victims and their families.
Even killing someone while you’re driving the car drunk won’t necessarily get you sent to jail.
Take the case of Jake Hamlin in Northland. He was this week sentenced to 12 months of home detention after drinking, speeding and veering across the centre line, killing 28-year-old Samantha Williams, a rising star in the fashion world, on May 19, 2023.
Judge Greg Davis also sentenced Hamlin to 200 hours’ community work, disqualified him from driving for 12 months and ordered him to pay $8000 in reparation. But that’s it. Hamlin gets to sit at home while Samantha Williams’ family live a never-ending nightmare. No Christmases with her, no birthdays, no future.
The judge’s reasoning? Hamlin was “caught up in an excessive drinking culture.”
I don’t buy that. Hamlin was 26 years old, fully aware of his actions. He wasn’t a teenager making a first-time mistake; he was a grown man who made the conscious decision to buy booze, drink heavily and drive recklessly. When he crossed the centreline on the Whangārei straights north of Waipu, it’s thought he was going 130km/h. Williams, who was driving north to visit family, stood no chance.
We say zero tolerance for drink-driving and yet, when it matters most, the courts let us down. What’s stopping a judge saying, “Enough is enough, sorry pal, you’re doing five years.” Hamlin didn’t just break the law; he took an innocent life.
National’s attempt to introduce tougher sentences and lower sentencing discounts for mitigating circumstances is still going through the parliamentary process. The proposed Sentencing (Reform) Amendment Bill caps at 40% the amount judges can reduce sentences by.
If you ask me, that’s still too much for such offences. When your daughter’s just been killed by a drunk driver, it’s all just noise. Given Hamlin’s sentence, I believe Samantha Williams’ family has every right to be angry and to feel let down. They remain devastated and heartbroken about the loss of a much-loved daughter.
Lenient judicial rulings are not confined to drink driving. Tobias Oliver-Davies, a young rugby player, walked out of a Wellington night club and into a fight. He choked a man unconscious, leading to a skull fracture and brain bleed when the man fell to the ground.
Oliver-Davies pleaded guilty to assault with intent to injure but on February 18 was given a discharge without conviction on account of his remorse and potential rugby career. So, he chokes someone until they black out – and that person has to have months off work recovering – but avoids a conviction entirely because he has a “bright future”.
Honestly, if you walk towards a fight and choke someone to an unconscious state, you need to be taken off the streets. You’re dangerous. Public safety must come before your career prospects.
But it seems some judges are more worried about a young rugby player’s career than the damage inflicted on other human beings. Since when does being good at rugby grant you immunity from the law? Every now and then is the answer. It’s hardly the first time promising, or established, rugby players have escaped conviction for assault.
We’re living in 2025. But at times it seems our justice system still operates like a boys’ club, responding to offenders in the weakest possible way and leaving victims further victimised -- or, in the case of those who have lost family members, wondering why their loved one was worth so little. The system falls over itself to minimise responsibility, issuing discounts and leniency as if they’re on sale.
The promise of getting “tough on crime” encouraged many to vote for the parties now in power -- National, Act and New Zealand First. But how often have we seen and heard that, then sighed, knowing how hard it is to get real change?
Some criminals, or their lawyers, are still able to game the system while the victims have to sit and wear it. We deserve better.
I don’t want to hear what politicians will do; I want to see it happen. When judges prioritise offenders’ futures over victims’ lives, something is deeply wrong. We don’t need more sympathy for criminals. We need justice for those they’ve destroyed.
