Claim judge bullied woman into plea
A visiting Canadian woman accused of injuring a man in a Queenstown bar was wrongly pressured into pleading guilty for fear she would be sent to jail, the Court of Appeal has been told.
The path the case took in the Invercargill District Court amounted to a form of judicial bullying, lawyer Nathan Bourke said in the Court of Appeal yesterday.
Heather Gleason-Beard had said she only meant to throw her drink in the face of a man she thought was going to touch her chest as they talked in a Queenstown bar on July 9, 2017.
He had asked her what she did and after she told him she used to be a stripper he said, ‘‘but look at those mosquito bite t***’’ and pointed.
But instead of just throwing the liquid from the glass, the glass itself hit the man and cut him under the nose.
The Crown called it a significant injury but Bourke said the man did not get medical treatment, preferring to carry on partying.
On the morning her trial was to begin the judge, over the repeated objections of her trial lawyer, told her he did not think she had a defence to the charge and if the jury found her guilty she would be sentenced to up to three years’ jail, Bourke said.
That sentence would have been wrong, and in any event she said she acted in self-defence which, if accepted, would have resulted in an acquittal, Bourke said.
The judge’s warning unfairly undermined Gleason-Beard’s lawyer whose advice could not undo the damage, he said.
The judge said if she pleaded guilty to injuring with reckless disregard for safety she would get community work and reparation, not prison.
Bourke said she was tearful and very distraught. She had no previous convictions and felt she had to plead guilty. She completed the sentence of 100 hours community work and $5000 reparation, and left New Zealand but appealed against her conviction. The Court of Appeal reserved its decision.
At the Court of Appeal, Crown lawyer Jo Mildenhall rejected that the judge was bullying. Mildenhall said the judge had a ‘‘robust’’ discussion, the Crown maintained Gleason-Beard had no effective defence, and had made some damning admissions.
One of the appeal judges, Justice Susan Thomas, asked if it was not a classic case for a jury to weigh up the evidence in a case with a large victim and a petite defendant.
Justice Joe Williams and Justice Timothy Brewer said they had never seen a case where a lawyer repeatedly asked a judge to stop making the suggestions he was.
After about three hours’ consideration – the law normally allows a defendant five working days to consider a sentencing indication – Gleason-Beard pleaded guilty.