No transgender discount for theft

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

A LAWYER'S submission that his client should get additional sentence reduction for being transgender fell flat with Gisborne’s new resident judge Warren Cathcart.

Joseph Haenga aka Daytona, 29, who identifies as a woman, pleaded guilty to four charges of using a document to obtain a pecuniary advantage arising out of separate instances over two days in which he used an elderly woman’s eftpos card at automatic bank machines to extract $2038 from her account.

He was sentenced in Gisborne District Court to eight months imprisonment and ordered to make full reparation within 28 days of being released or arrange to do so by instalments.

The sentence included three months uplift for Haenga’s similar past offending and a full 25 percent discount for his guilty plea.

The judge rejected counsel Melanie Tarsau’s submissions (presented by counsel Elliot Lynch in her absence) for Haenga to get additional credit for remorse and due to his transgender status, which Ms Tarsau argued would make a prison term disproportionately severe.

Judge Cathcart said a letter Haenga wrote to the court went no further than the remorse already implicit in his guilty pleas.

Neither should Haenga should get additional discount for his transgender status, although he had recently been segregated after an “incident” while remanded in custody.

Not incarcerated with general populationThe judge said he had not been presented with any case law authority to suggest transgender offenders must be given greater allowance because of it. There was no suggestion that Haenga would serve his sentence in the general prison population.

Even if the severity of the sentence were reflected in Haenga’s life choice issue, there was no evidence (as required) that it would be disproportionately severe.

Judge Cathcart put it to Mr Lynch that Haenga had made a life choice for which offenders facing the same factual scenario would not get credit.

But Mr Lynch did not want to speak to the matter, saying he did not know whether Haenga’s lifestyle resulted from “nature or nurture”.

The judge said similar offending had appeared regularly in Haenga’s criminal history and had resulted in other prison terms.

Prosecutor Tess Brownlie said police were concerned Haenga continued to target elderly people. He was fresh out of jail for a burglary last year of a 94-year-old resident at a retirement village when he committed this latest offence.

Judge Cathcart noted Haenga initially denied the offence, claiming a person photographed by bank security footage was someone else who had borrowed his clothes.

The judge pointed to a victim statement that said the complainant, a widow who lived alone, suffered not only financial loss but substantial emotional harm. Her family had also been put under strain because of the offence and now fearful for her safety, were locking her in her house.