On June 2, 2022, self-described protective mother Donna Dodds was sentenced to intensive supervision for trying to influence witnesses in a criminal investigation of her then 23-year-old son.
Less than 24 hours after that hearing, she embroiled herself in another of son Ethan Dodds’ unlawful schemes – this time trying to derail the investigation into his robbery and murder that morning of small-time drug dealer Benjamin “Dekoy” Mcintosh.
As Donna Dodds appeared in the High Court at Auckland today for sentencing on the latest charge, Justice Graham Lang wasn’t so hopeful about her potential for rehabilitation as the previous judge had been. He rejected her request for home detention, ordering instead a sentence of 14 months’ incarceration.
“I would have been attracted to that submission [that home detention is the best outcome] if this was the first occasion,” the judge explained, adding that the first attempt to pervert justice was “one factor I cannot ignore”.
While hesitant to order prison for a 61-year-old who had never received such a sentence before, it was needed in this case for denunciation, deterrence and the need to hold her accountable, he said.
Donna Dodds pleaded guilty in February to wilfully attempting to pervert the course of justice, which carries a maximum sentence of seven years’ imprisonment. The admission of guilt, on the eve of her son’s three-week murder trial, avoided her having to sit next to him in the dock, but it didn’t stop her name from being brought up repeatedly as the narrative of the killing emerged.
Prosecutors said Ethan Dodds and co-defendant Julius Te Hiva Ka left Dodds’ Hillsborough home at 6.15am on June 3, 2022, to meet Mcintosh at Harold Moody Park in Glen Eden. The pretence of the meeting had been a drug purchase, but jurors agreed with prosecutors that Ethan Dodds and Te Hiva Ka actually intended to rob Mcintosh at gunpoint.
In the witness box, Ethan Dodds admitted bringing a sawn-off semi-automatic rifle to the meeting – although he insisted his only intention was to scare Mcintosh, who he didn’t know personally, over a previous unrelated incident supposedly involving Mcintosh and an unidentified friend’s mother. The defendant also admitted the gun went off while he was holding it in the back seat of Mcintosh’s car, causing Mcintosh’s death. But he claimed the trigger was pulled by accident and the taking of Mcintosh’s wallet and drugs stash was merely an afterthought as he fled the scene in shock.
Jurors found Ethan Dodds and Te Hiva Ka both guilty of murder. A third co-defendant – Tamirah Baker, who had been dating the victim up until his death before starting a relationship in the days that followed with Ethan Dodds – was found guilty of being an accessory after the fact to murder and illegally possessing the gun used to kill her ex.
After fleeing the scene of the West Auckland shooting, Ethan Dodds was dropped off at his mother’s South Auckland home at 8.12am.
“Approximately one minute after her son returned, Donna Dodds, Ethan Dodds and her other son departed the address in Donna Dodds’ vehicle,” the agreed summary of facts for the case state.
Jurors in Ethan Dodds’ trial were repeatedly shown CCTV video, seized from Donna Dodds’ home, showing the hasty departure.
From there, the trio drove to the Waikato region and paid for a room in a Cambridge motel, which Donna Dodds paid for under the false name “Deanna Courtney”. In the process, she violated the court-ordered curfew that had been imposed as part of her previous sentencing.
But her crime occurred several days later, after she had returned home and police executed a search warrant looking for her son. She agreed to talk to police, at which point she claimed she had left on a trip to New Plymouth with her sons around 9pm the night before Mcintosh’s murder. The trip was called off but not until after the family spent two nights in Waikato, she told police. Her own CCTV would later prove otherwise.
“The formal statement given by Donna Dodds on 6 June 2022 was inconsistent with this evidence,” court documents state. “Donna Dodds provided this statement to police to mislead the homicide investigation and provide her son Ethan Dodds with an alibi for his whereabouts at the time of Mr Mcintosh’s shooting.”
In victim impact statements read aloud by the Crown in court today, multiple members of Mcintosh’s family chastised Dodds for “appalling and terrible guidance as a mother” by allowing her son to think it was permissible to get away with murder.
“Her deceitful actions have only served to compound the anguish,” Mcintosh’s mother said.
“She didn’t hold her son accountable for her actions,” another family member wrote. “We should all know right from wrong.”
An auntie of the victim described “six days of pure fear and anxiety” as Ethan Dodds remained at-large in part because of the actions of his mother. She feared for her safety when she should have been fully concentrating on saying goodbye to him in hospital prior to the decision to take him off life support, she said.
Defence lawyer George Burns submitted a letter of apology from his client and emphasised that she knew nothing of a plan to rob or kill Mcintosh. A widow who lost another son in infancy, she’s no stranger to some of the feelings expressed by Mcintosh’s family, he said.
“I just want to be clear ... that Mrs Dodds’ role in the overall offending was discreet and it was separate from the substantial charge,” Burns said. “She did not know what was going to happen there, or what had happened when her son returned home to her address.”
But that’s not the whole story, Justice Lang suggested, replying: “Well, she became aware at some point.”
Burns described a “close bond” between the mother and son and noted both occasions that landed her before a judge “involved her in one way or another trying to protect her son”. A prison sentence wasn’t required to stop her from reoffending, he suggested, because Ethan Dodds is likely to spend a substantial amount of time in prison as a result of his murder conviction so there won’t be another opportunity for her protective tendencies to be misdirected.
Crown prosecutor Conrad Purdon disagreed, arguing a prison sentence was needed for denunciation and deterrence given her previous sentence “for near identical offending”. Instead of her newly submitted letter of apology, a more genuine show of remorse would have been to retract her police statement, which he said she never did.
In making his own decision, Justice Lang referred to a pre-sentence report suggesting Donna Dodds “naively allowed your son to manipulate you”. But he rejected her suggestion that she was under so much stress after having her home searched at gunpoint that she mixed up dates and accidentally gave false information. Instead, he said, it was a “pre-mediated attempt to obstruct a police investigation”.
“You’re obviously not responsible for the events that led to Mr Mcintosh’s death,” he said before referring to the victim impact statements. “We all know right from wrong, and your alibi failed to hold your son accountable for his actions.”
Several times as the judge announced the decision, a supporter of Donna Dodds who described himself as a longtime friend stood up in the gallery and tried to speak. He was eventually ordered to leave the courtroom.
Immediately after the sentence was announced, Donna Dodds raised her hand and tried to address the judge as well. Security appeared to have to gently push her out of the dock as she tried to communicate with a family member in the gallery.
Her son, along with co-defendants Te Hiva Ka and Baker, are set to be sentenced next month.
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.
Judge: 'It's behaviour that is wrong and at your age, you should know better'.