Crown to appeal sentence of Tana Ormsby-Turner, teen Mongrel Mob member involved in killing

The Crown has filed an appeal against a sentence handed down to a teenage Mongrel Mob member. Photo / NZME

The Crown believes the sentence a teen Mongrel Mob member received for his involvement in a murder was “manifestly inadequate” and has sought an appeal to see him jailed.

Tana Ormsby-Turner, 17, was originally charged with the Taranaki murder of Rei Joseph Tumatauinga Maihi Marshall, but went on to plead guilty to reduced charges of being an accessory after the fact to murder and wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.

He was sentenced to 12 months of home detention in July when he appeared in the High Court at New Plymouth before Justice Francis Cooke.

Marshall, a 23-year-old father of two, was hit a number of times in the head with a claw hammer by Ormsby-Turner.

Only moments prior, the teen’s brother, Turanganui Ormsby-Turner, the Mongrel Mob West Coast chapter president, stabbed Marshall in the torso with a hunting knife.

While the hammer blows fractured the back of Marshall’s head, it was the stab wound that caused his death on August 3 last year.

The teen went on to cover up the murder by disposing of evidence at the instruction of his brother.

Following the sentencing, deputy Solicitor-General Madeleine Laracy filed a notice of appeal against the youth’s sentence.

In the document, released to NZME this week by the Court of Appeal, Laracy sets out the grounds on which the appeal was filed.

A date is yet to be set for the hearing, which will be heard in the Court of Appeal. Photo / NZME

It submitted the outcome was “manifestly inadequate and wrong in principle”, and the end sentence was “not proportionate to the culpability of the offender and the seriousness of the offending, taking into account all the purposes and principles of sentencing”.

Other grounds advanced suggested the starting point was too low, and that the judge erred in his approach to the assessment and calculation of discounts, including making procedural errors.

“Home detention is not an appropriate sentence in this case given the seriousness of the offending, the respondent’s commitment to the Mongrel Mob gang (which was a contributing factor to the offending) and his misrepresentation to the court as to his rehabilitative potential,” the final ground read.

While Justice Cooke took a starting point of seven years’ imprisonment when sentencing Ormsby-Turner, he then applied 70 per cent credit before reaching the outcome of home detention.

The judge said he believed the teen still had a chance of being rehabilitated and that could not be achieved in prison.

But the Crown had submitted Ormsby-Turner was not remorseful and there was no hope of rehabilitation for him.

Prosecutor Cherie Clarke, who argued for an end sentence of no less than five years and six months of imprisonment, spotlighted the lies that had been told to the court by the youth and others about him cutting ties with the gang.

In reality, he was patched into the Mob while on bail awaiting sentence, and the fibs were told in an effort to get full credit for youth, Clarke submitted.

Defence lawyer Kylie Pascoe said Ormsby-Turner was remorseful, despite the patch, and that he had been indoctrinated into the gang.

She said there was evidence confirming he could be rehabilitated, but if he was jailed that opportunity would cease and his gang association would only continue.

A date is yet to be set for the appeal hearing.

Turanganui Ormsby-Turner was jailed in May for life with a minimum period of imprisonment of 10 years and six months for murdering Marshall.

A third person charged in relation to the killing, patched Mobster Hamiroa Laupama, was sentenced in December to five months of home detention for being an accessory after the fact. He was also initially charged with murder before it was reduced.