Judges rule against serial sex offender
Serial sex offender Stewart Murray Wilson has lost his appeal against his latest convictions and sentence.
Wilson, 72, was sentenced late last year to two years and four months’ jail for historic offences against three victims.
A jury at the High Court in Auckland had found him guilty on four charges of rape, three of doing an indecent act on a girl, one of attempted rape, burglary, indecent assault, and threatening to kill.
The offending relates to two adult women and a nine-year-old girl between 1971 and 1980.
In a decision released yesterday, his appeal was dismissed by the court.
Wilson’s lawyer, Andrew Mckenzie, had argued earlier this year that the complaints against Wilson from the two women had been recorded by police before Wilson was sentenced in 1996 for a raft of other offences. In 2000 other charges against Wilson were stopped and so should the charges from the two women.
Another ground for appeal was based on a charge of rape being reduced during the trial to one of attempted rape.
It unfairly deprived Wilson of his intended defence that there was no penetration, Mckenzie said.
The sentence appeal was that if Wilson had been sentenced in 1996 for the most recent convictions, he would not have got a longer sentence than the 21 years he received, Mckenzie said.
Another ground of the sentence appeal was that Wilson should have been discharged because in relation to one of the women the prosecution had waited 40 years to charge him.
However, in the decision, the Court of Appeal threw out his arguments.
On all the points raised by Mckenzie, the judges found that Wilson had not suffered a miscarriage of justice.
In particular, it had been correct for the charge of rape to be reduced to attempted rape.
‘‘We also agree with the judge’s observation that there was no unfairness to Mr Wilson in granting the amendment,’’ they said.
In relation to his sentence, the Court ruled that Justice Lang – who sentenced Wilson in the most recent trial – was correct in the way it was approached.
‘‘We do not think the objections made to Mr Wilson’s sentence are sound.’’
Wilson – who is considered one of New Zealand’s worse sex offenders – was released on parole earlier this year.
He is currently residing at a house on the Whanganui Prison grounds.
A Marlborough woman who used knives to threaten her sister after catching the 11-year-old ‘‘secretly recording’’, told police she just wanted to ‘‘frighten’’ her.
Mallory Jane Barrett-rawiri, 18, pleaded guilty to two counts of threatening behaviour when she appeared in the Blenheim District Court on Monday.
About 5.15pm on October 22, Barrett-rawiri and a friend were preparing food in the family house, a police summary of facts said. Becoming aware of her sister secretly recording her, Barrett-rawiri began verbally abusing her and threatening her while throwing food and other items around the kitchen.
Her sister ran to the adjoining unit. The defendant followed her there and found her frightened and crying with their grandmother and aunt.
Barrett-rawiri took her sister’s ipad, threw it on the ground and stomped on it. She threatened to kill her sister.
She left and went back to the house. Her grandmother locked the doors behind her.
A short time later she returned and finding the door locked, kicked it.
She returned to the main house, picked up two large steel knives and walked purposefully with a knife in each hand to the unit’s conservatory.
At one stage she had one knife raised alongside her head in a stabbing position as she threatened to smash the windows and made threats to kill her sister.
She returned to the main house where her friend convinced her to put the knives on the bench.
As Barrett-rawiri and her friend were leaving the property, she saw her grandmother watching her through the window.
She gestured at her grandmother and threatened her.
Her lawyer Phil Watson said he had filled out an application for restorative justice and she was seeing a psychologist.
She would appear sentencing on January 21. for