An axe attack on the Prime Minister's Electoral Office and inflammatory pamphlets landed Timothy Selwyn in jail for two months. Photo / Kenny Rodger
A man jailed on the rare charge of sedition has lost an appeal against conviction and sentence.
Upset over the foreshore and seabed legislation, Timothy Selwyn left an axe embedded in the window of Prime Minister Helen Clark's electorate office on November 18, 2004, and distributed pamphlets calling
on people to commit acts of civil disobedience.
In June 2006 a jury acquitted Selwyn on one count of sedition but convicted him on a second count. He was jailed for two months on the sedition charge and 15 months on unrelated fraud charges.
He appealed on the grounds that the verdict was not supported by the evidence and that the trial judge erred in law when directing the jury on the meaning of sedition.
During the trial, the essence of Selwyn's defence was that he intended to encourage civil disobedience, but not violence, lawlessness or disorder.
In a judgment released yesterday, the Appeal Court found the sentence to be well within the range available to the judge.
The Appeal Court said Selwyn's lawyer was correct that the judge failed to direct the jury that proof of an intention to encourage violence was an essential element of the crime of sedition. And the judge did not refer to the need for the Crown to prove a seditious intention in relation to property associated with the Crown or government. But despite these errors the court did not consider there was an appreciable miscarriage of justice.
"[The pamphlet] could not be construed in any other way than as an expression of seditious intention," the judgment said.
- NZPA
