Prisoner socked with five-year term

A Hawke's Bay Prison inmate sentenced yesterday to five years jail for attacking a fellow prisoner with a cosh made with a bar of soap and a sock had been due for release on the day after the assault.
The assault was a "hit" ordered by other inmates and carried out by Samson Bruce Rina Raymond Rewha, who had no personal issues with the victim.
The man who was assaulted had an eye-socket broken when attacked while playing chess with another inmate.
The details were revealed when Rewha, now 24, appeared in the Napier District Court, after pleading guilty to a charge of causing grievous bodily harm with intent to injure.
While accepting others had been involved in the attack, Judge Geoff Rea said that in the context of a prison setting it was not a mitigating factor.
"It was almost certainly an aggravating factor," he said, after outlining the facts Rewha admitted to police.
If allowed as a plea of mitigation it would "simply provide a licence for violence in the prison system," he said.
The judge said there was no provocation, and the attack was planned. Two days before the attack, Rewha was approached by two other inmates who told him he was to break the nose of an inmate said to have been in debt with others in the jail.
Rewha then made the cosh by hand-clamping a bar of soap and putting it in a sock.
Once he started the assault he continued striking the victim's head with the cosh until he was restrained by prison officers, Judge Rea said.
Defence counsel Roger Phillip said pressure had been put on Rewha to carry out the attack before he was released, although he had "no particular beef" with the victim, who was said to have had debts with others in the prison.