Preventive detention to be considered for ear biting

August 29, 2015 | By More

Court House-general2A judge has decided the High Court should consider a preventive detention sentence for a 19-year-old who has admitted biting part of the ears off two fellow prisoners.

Christchurch District Court Judge Raoul Neave said psychiatric and psychological reports prepared before the sentencing of William Alexander Hamish Grant showed there was a risk of further offending.

The High Court was clearly the proper place for Grant’s prison term to be decided, he said as he declined jurisdiction and sent the teenager for sentencing on October 1.

Defence counsel Elizabeth Bulger had pointed out that the Crown was not seeking a preventive detention sentence on two charges of disfiguring the two prisoners with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, and one of injuring with intent to cause grievous bodily harm – stabbing another prisoner with an improvised knife.

Grant appeared in court with a right eye that was black and swollen.

Judge Neave said he would be reluctant “for the door to be closed” on Grant at this early stage.

He suggested that the defence could raise the issues in the High Court about Grant’s youth, and the fact that no meaningful treatment had ever been tried for Grant.

The court had received pleas from Grant’s family for treatment to be offered to him.

Judge Neave said he agreed that successful treatment could significantly reduce the risk factors.

It was a case where he thought it was too early to contemplate anything but a finite jail term, rather than a preventive detention system.

“But the statute makes it clear that considerations such as this are properly vested in the High Court,” he said.

At the time of the incidents inside prison, Grant was serving a three-and-a-half year term for a 2012 assault on his ex-girlfriend, aged 15, in which he beat and choked her, tried to push her head under water in the bath, stomped on her head, and bit her nose.

Category: Focus

«
»

Pin It on Pinterest