Supremacist to get payout
The Department of Corrections has been ordered to pay $3000 to white supremacist Philip Neville Arps after it was unsuccessful in prosecuting him for an alleged breach of release conditions.
Arps had been jailed for 21 months in 2019 after he sent a video of the Christchurch terror attack to 30 people, and asked a friend to modify it by adding cross-hairs and a ‘‘kill count’’.
He was released in January 2020 but remains subject to strict conditions prohibiting him from going near mosques in New Zealand or having contact with anyone in the Muslim community.
In August, Arps’ electronic monitoring bracelet showed he was at premises directly next to Linwood mosque. Police were notified, and Arps was quickly found at nearby shops and arrested.
Arps immediately denied he had loitered close to the mosque, and said he had visited a home brew store in a shopping centre next door.
Arps’ lawyer, Anselm Williams, obtained CCTV footage that showed Arps visited the store between 9.45am and 9.50am that day. The store’s manager confirmed that Arps simply entered the shop, bought various items and left.
When Arps appeared in court in October, Williams said that ‘‘police and the Department of Corrections made no inquiries’’ at the time to verify his explanation. The charge against Arps was dismissed.
In an application for costs, Arps’ defence submitted that Corrections should be held liable for his legal costs of $7300. Williams said the prosecution should never have been brought.
Shivani Dayal, representing Corrections, opposed the application, saying the department had sufficient evidence at the start of the case to support a prosecution, and that it had acted in good faith by continuing the proceedings.
Judge Peter Rollo said he was satisfied that there was good cause to suspect that Arps was breaching his release conditions when his GPS bracelet showed him being so close to the mosque. He said that even though the charge against Arps was later dismissed, he did not consider it improper for the charge to have been brought.
The judge did, however, find that the prosecutor should have considered and responded more promptly when the evidence showed that Arps had not breached his release conditions, instead of continuing the proceedings for a number of weeks.
Judge Rollo ordered Corrections to pay $3000 to partially compensate Arps for his legal costs. He said the sum reflected the fact that it was proper for Arps to pay his own legal fees up until the bail hearing, but that Corrections should be held liable for the costs Arps incurred after it became obvious that the prosecution could not succeed.