No jail for home detention breach
A WOMAN who pushed her husband down a flight of steps to his death could have ended up behind bars after breaching her home detention sentence.
Susan Elizabeth Mouat (53) appeared in the Dunedin District Court yesterday, where she admitted the breach, which took place on June 22 when she was serving the sentence in Napier.
The charge carries a maximum penalty of a year in prison but Judge John Macdonald sentenced her to a sixmonth deferred sentence.
Bruce Mouat suffered critical injuries after falling down the steps of his Hawera home and died in hospital in July 2011.
Mrs Mouat told police he had come
home drunk and must have tripped down the outside stairway.
No charges were laid and the coroner ruled the death was accidental.
But six years later she went to police and admitted she pushed her husband, claiming it was ‘‘selfdefence’’.
‘‘I have been very unwell as a result of trying to keep that lie. I just wish for it now to be over and I’m ready,’’ she told officers.
Mrs Mouat claimed her husband had promised to cut back on his drinking and when he returned home intoxi cated, she was ‘‘really angry’’.
In October Mrs Mouat was sentenced in the High Court at New Plymouth to 11 months’ home detention.
She challenged the outcome in the Court of Appeal in December, claiming she should have been sentenced to community detention.
The appeal was dismissed.
The court yesterday heard Mrs Mouat had been on her electronically monitored homedetention sentence for more than eight months when the transgression came.
On June 21, she contacted Probation and asked for an ‘‘approved absence’’ from her home in the Napier suburb of Bluff Hill to see her lawyer the next day.
Her request was declined and her lawyer was contacted by authorities to explain the timeframe around such applications. He told Probation he would go to Mrs Mouat’s home instead.
However, the next day the security company responsible for monitoring offenders’ compliance received an alert that she had left the boundaries of her property.
Probation contacted the woman’s lawyer, who confirmed she was at his chambers despite the lack of permission.
‘‘She failed to leave the chambers and continued to carry on with her business,’’ a summary of facts said.
Duty lawyer Cate Andersen called the incident a ‘‘little slipup’’ and said there had been no other problems.
Mrs Mouat had relocated to Dunedin, the court heard.
Her homedetention sentence ends on September 12.