Police are appealing a High Court ruling that may call into question the legal basis for more than 20,000 formal written warnings issued over the last decade.
Murder trial: James McFarlane stabbed brother-in-law Thunder Savage in fight over noise
17 May, 2021 06:00 AM
5 minutes to read
James McFarlane Snr is on trial for murder in the High Court at Rotorua. Photo / Andrew Warner
James McFarlane Snr is on trial for murder in the High Court at Rotorua. Photo / Andrew Warner
Kelly Makiha
A verbal fight between brothers-in-law over noise ended when one plunged a knife 20cm into the chest of the other man, killing him within minutes. James McFarlane Snr is standing trial in the High Court at Rotorua for the murder of Thunder Savage at a family home in Edgecumbe in the Eastern Bay of Plenty on October 2, 2019.
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The defendant couldn’t bear to see his wife suffer after a severe stroke left her unable to move without help and made communication very difficult (file photo).
A man in his 80s who took his wife from a care home and tried to enact what he says was a failed suicide pact has been sentenced to home detention. After decades of marriage, Roy Ernest Morton, 82, became increasingly concerned about how his wife was being looked after in a Waikato care home in the months following a severe stroke. His desperation came to a head on October 12, 2020, when he took her out under the pretext of a walk, and made an attempt on both of their lives.
An elderly man took his frail wife out for a walk from her nursing home and attempted to kill both of them to end her suffering .
Roy Ernest Morton, 82, grew increasingly exasperated over how his wife was being cared for in the New Zealand facility after she suffered a stroke.
On Friday, he was sentenced to four-and-a-half months of home detention for the failed attempt, which he claimed was a suicide pact.
The court acknowledged his motivation was to release his wife from what he felt was suffering as she was unable to move or talk.
Justice Davison said that while the man clearly cared for his wife she could not have agreed to a suicide pact (stock image)
Tony Wall16:18, May 07 2021
Stuff
A high school teacher accused of sexual grooming of a student received a formal warning like this, ruled illegal by a judge after it was shared with other parties.
Police have appealed a decision by a High Court judge ruling that their much-used “formal warnings” are illegal. But at the same time they are launching a review into the practice, to ensure the warnings are issued “consistently”.
Stuffrevealed in April that Justice Paul Davison had found that the warnings – issued 20,000 times in the past 10 years to people who hadn’t been convicted of any crime – had no basis in statutory or common law and were a breach of the Bill of Rights Act.