Two Rotorua sisters have had their jail sentences for blackmail quashed.
Amanda Waitangi Sale, 21, and Pisila Martin, 31, were jailed for two years in June after pleading guilty to blackmailing a married man Sale had a sexual encounter with. They threatened him with violence and exposure, each receiving about $2000 from him.
The pair appealed the sentence to the High Court and were released on bail pending the appeal, heard last week.
In her judgment, Justice Rebecca Ellis quashed the jail sentences and replaced them with nine months' home detention. She also upheld the original reparation order, and ordered each woman to pay it back at $25 a week.
Justice Ellis found District Court Judge Phil Gittos made two material errors in his approach to sentencing.
First, he failed to take into account the reparation order and second, he adopted a presumption in favour of imprisonment in blackmail cases. That was incorrect, she said.
"The sentencing judge must therefore consider whether a community-based sentence would achieve the relevant purposes of sentencing."
Justice Ellis accepted the need to denounce and deter blackmail, which she said was "a particularly insidious and nasty crime".
"But as has been noted on numerous prior occasions, home detention is very far from a walk in the park."
She found there was no need to protect the community from the women and also noted the adverse effect them going to jail would have on their children.