Sentence not tough enough, court told
A man whose ‘‘persistent and deliberate’’ bad driving contributed to the death of four people should have received a tougher sentence, the Court of Appeal has heard.
The Crown has taken an appeal over the home detention sentence of Dylan Cossey, who had been found guilty of four charges of manslaughter.
Cossey was given 12 months home detention, 400 hours community work and disqualified from driving for seven years.
‘‘The totality of the harm caused was completely overlooked. He was sentenced as if it was a single charge of manslaughter,’’ Crown lawyer Charlotte Brook told the Court of Appeal yesterday.
Cossey was at the court to hear the argument for him to get a higher sentence. Also in court was three of the four families of those killed. Cossey was racing his Honda Integra against a Nissan Skyline driven by Lance Tyrone Robinson, at estimated speeds of more than 150kmh on June 24, 2016. The race came to a sudden end when Robinson lost control and collided with an oncoming van about 10pm. In the doomed vehicle were Hannah Leis Strickett-Craze, 24, Robinson, 28, and Paul de Silva, 20, all from Waipa, and Jason McCormick Ross, 19, from Taranaki.
Brook said it was simply the worst case to come before the court in terms of outcome. She said not only had the sentencing judge understated the gravity of the offending but then compounded the error by overstating the mitigating factors to reduce the sentence to home detention.
‘‘It was persistent and deliberate bad driving. And would have continued if there had not been a crash.’’
She said Cossey was not admitting his part in the crash. The sentence should have been in excess of home detention, and was not because the judge did not want to send him to prison, Brook said.
Cossey had fled from the
scene of the head-on smash near Hamilton Airport with his codefendant Stephen John Jones, 20, in the front passenger seat.
Cossey had been found guilty by a High Court jury in Hamilton on four counts of manslaughter.
Jones was found not guilty. Both Cossey and Jones were also charged with causing injury to the van’s driver and failing to stop to ascertain injury.
The van driver suffered multiple leg fractures and had to be cut from his vehicle. Cossey was found guilty of this also, while Jones was found not guilty.
Both were guilty of the failing-to-stop charges.
Jones was also found guilty of one count of attempting to pervert the course of justice – a charge that relates toediting the video he took of the crash and the moments leading up to and after it, removing 20 seconds of evidence before handing his phone in to police.
Cossey’s lawyer Philip Morgan QC said the judge had heard all the evidence and was uniquely qualified to to assess his culpability.
He said the judge accepted he was truly remorseful and had given him a year’s discount for previous good character and no previous convictions.
Morgan said Cossey had now nearly finished his home detention sentence.
The court reserved its decision.