A recidivist prison stabber has been ordered to spend an additional year behind bars following his most recent attack spree, which left a Corrections officer and a fellow prisoner needing medical attention.
This weekend marks eight years since Sean Daniel Browne, then 18, was handed his first substantial prison sentence of five years’ imprisonment for a series of burglaries.
He’s remained in prison ever since.
In recent years, the now-26-year-old’s criminal record has got markedly more serious due to his behaviour in prison, Judge Paul Murray noted this week as Browne appeared in the North Shore District Court for his latest sentencing.
“He experiences ongoing pain,” the judge said of the Corrections officer who was “donkey kicked” in the knee by Browne in January last year.
The officer had been using a metal detector to search Browne, who was handcuffed, prior to letting him into the exercise yard at the high-security Auckland Prison in Paremoremo. He was off work for two weeks due to a sprained knee, elbow and hand.
“The incident made his life harder - more stressful,” the judge said. “It’s a difficult job being a Corrections officer without you making things harder.”
Just one month earlier, in December 2024, Browne had been charged with another crime after he approached an inmate while holding an improvised prison knife - despite the other man being accompanied by three officers.
“The victim entered the [exercise] yard handcuffed with his hands positioned in the rear [and] the door was ajar to allow the Corrections officers to remove the handcuffs,” the agreed summary of facts states.
“[As] officers removed the victim’s first handcuff and proceeded to remove the second handcuff, the defendant approached the victim, stabbing him in the face twice with a shank.”
The victim attempted to defend himself, and the two squared off into boxing stances, circling each other.
“The defendant kicked the victim in the torso area and attempted to stab the victim with the shank on two additional occasions,” court documents state.
The other inmate required stitches to his cheek and scalp.
Browne, who sported a mohawk and goatee as he sat in the courtroom dock this week, claimed he attacked the fellow inmate because he was suspected of having “narked” on a member of Browne’s former gang. He claimed to have lashed out at the prison officer because the officer touched his groin.
Judge Murray said he could see how it was possible that was the actual reason, however inexcusable, for the attack on the prisoner. Of Browne’s explanation for the officer attack, the judge was blunt: “I don’t believe that.”
Browne faced up to five years’ imprisonment for the attack on the fellow prisoner and up to three years for the attack on the officer. More importantly, the sentence was to be served consecutively with the terms he is already serving.
Due to prior prison misbehaviour, he was already not slated for release until May 2034. It will now be 2035.
Browne’s criminal history was extensive even before his first major sentencing eight years ago.
“For a guy who is 18, it is a disgrace,” Judge Tom Gilbert told him at the January 25, 2018, hearing in Christchurch, where Browne grew up. “It contains a lot of violence and dishonesty.”
By this week’s sentencing, the defendant had accumulated 26 adult convictions and nearly 50 Youth Court matters on his record.
Judge Gilbert went on to call Browne “not the smartest guy” as he outlined the three burglaries and one aggravated robbery for which he was being sentenced.
“But still you are clever enough, and understand enough, to know what you were doing was wrong and you are capable of making choices,” the judge continued.
Browne had been armed with an airgun that looked like a realistic rifle when he and others robbed a Christchurch dairy in August 2016.
“Give us what you’ve got or we will kill you,” Browne had yelled, pointing the gun at the victim’s head as his mates shovelled cigarettes into their bags and emptied the tills of cash.
The first of the three burglaries, in September 2016, involved raiding a garage music studio at a New Brighton home. Several guitars were pawned the next day. The following May, Browne smashed a window to gain entry into another New Brighton home and made off with $6700 worth of items. Police were able to trace it back to him after he left his DNA at the scene.
Just one week later, he was caught red-handed after smashing his way into another residence. He fled the home and climbed over a neighbouring fence upon hearing the resident return home. But the homeowner was able to catch up to him and restrain him until police arrived.
While imposing the five-year sentence, the judge noted that Browne had the potential to be released significantly earlier “if you do something constructive while in prison”. The defendant had told authorities prior to the hearing that he wanted to change his life so he did not return to prison.
But the judge warned that without serious effort, Browne’s future looked bleak.
“What you did on these occasions is a continuation of your conduct since you were a 14-year-old boy,” he said. “So you need to figure out a way to change Mr Browne, otherwise you will end up spending your life in prison. ”
In the time between that hearing when he was 18 and his hearing this week, Browne had been back before various courts four times for sentencing over six different prison incidents.
He had two years added to his sentence in April 2020 for injury with intent to injure, and in December 2020, another four years and 10 months was added for two separate incidents: an arson inside prison in December 2019 and a kerfuffle 10 days earlier in which he picked up charges for resisting police, assaulting a prison officer and injury with intent to injure.
Five years and four months were added to his sentence in March 2022 after another prison attack in which he and a mate “in an entirely unprovoked way” repeatedly stabbed another inmate with shanks, stomping on his head after he fell to the ground.
“During this time, you, Mr Browne, restrained B by sitting on his chest,” High Court judge Simon Moore outlined to the heavyset defendant at the 2022 sentencing, pointing out that the victim was left with an 11cm neck wound.
“You used your shank to saw across his neck.”
Browne was initially charged with attempted murder for that incident, but the charge was later reduced to wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.
The attack didn’t stop until prison guards were able to intervene about 40 seconds later.
“Unsurprisingly, [the victim] sustained life-threatening injuries...,” Justice Moore noted. “He also suffered several puncture wounds to his face and multiple bone fractures to his cheekbones and facial area.”
An additional three years and two months were added to Browne’s sentence in December 2023 after pleading guilty to two more incidents resulting in charges of injuring with intent to cause grievous bodily harm and for wounding with intent to injure.
Defence lawyer Emma Priest noted during this week’s sentencing that her client suffered from ADHD and received a recent possible diagnosis of foetal alcohol spectrum disorder, which can result in lifelong disabilities, including poor impulse control.
Given the new diagnosis, which would have likely resulted in prior sentence reductions had judges known about it, Priest suggested Judge Murray not impose an uplift for her client’s past convictions.
Browne has been described by previous judges as having a “good childhood”, but Judge Murray this week saw it differently based on the newest pre-sentencing reports. Browne’s mother moved to Australia with his older sister when he was 10 years old, leaving him behind, he noted.
“You described feeling rejected and abandoned,” the judge said.
He had difficulty in school and left at age 13, joining a gang that same year. He started using methamphetamine at age 14 and had been consistently in trouble with the law ever since, the judge noted.
He’s been affiliated with the Tribesmen gang since 2023 and hopes to become patched, the court was told. He’s been assessed as a high risk of reoffending.
But the judge noted he also came across in pre-sentence reports as polite and well spoken. As he did in 2018, Browne again told report writers he wants to change.
The judge ordered a starting point of two years and seven months for both of the latest attacks, increasing it by another two months for his previous offences. He then allowed discounts totalling 55% for his guilty plea, his ADHD and FASD diagnoses and for his background.
It would have resulted in a cumulative sentence of 16 months, but Judge Murray decided that length would be “crushing” given his existing sentences. He reduced it to one year.
“It’s sadly not difficult to see how you have ended up where you have,” the judge said, referring to his childhood.
Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.
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