This time it happened after a night of heavy drinking. He woke up in the morning and “panicked” as he’d slept in, so he drove his partner’s car to Port Nelson to avoid missing the fishing boat he worked on.
It was just before 7am on April 22 this year when the police stopped Bevan in Richmond while he was on his way to the port from the Moutere area, near Motueka.
Police had received a complaint about the vehicle he was driving having crossed the centreline several times.
He was found to be driving at more than twice the legal limit, with a blood-alcohol reading of 123 micrograms of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood. The legal limit is 50mcg.
Bevan eventually admitted charges of drink-driving on a third or subsequent time and driving while disqualified on a third or subsequent occasion.
The 36-year-old was convicted in 2009 before a 10-year gap until the next conviction in 2019, another in 2020 and two in 2022.
The penalty this time included prison time on charges of breaching post-detention conditions and breaching community work, for which he had failed to turn up on 14 occasions, and he had so far completed just 30 hours of a 200-hour community work sentence.
His lawyer Steven Zindel said the offending was “kind of work-related” in that he had recently finished a long sea voyage and was with flatmates “drinking late”, slept in, and made the bad decision to drive his partner’s car to the port to join the fishing vessel.
Zindel said the breach of post-detention conditions from his previous sentence stemmed from the “unpredictable nature” of sea voyages and having to work at short notice.
Bevan had a 3-year-old child but made no excuses for the fact he “chanced it with his partner’s car” after he had been drinking, Zindel said.
Judge Rielly said Bevan had tried to explain his failure to engage in the previous sentence as related to his need to prioritise work in the fishing industry, and that he had “blown out” after long weeks at sea.
The judge noted Bevan did not consider he had an issue with alcohol misuse but had made a bad decision to drive after drinking with friends, which was the reason he had got into trouble.
Judge Rielly noted Zindel’s statement around higher courts, questioning if giving final warnings was legally permissible, but there was a hierarchy in sentencing that the court needed to consider when dealing with repeat offenders.
She said the next step from home detention was prison.
Bevan was awarded a discount for his guilty pleas, which were not made early but neither were they late, Judge Rielly said.
There was nothing about his circumstances, including his apparent lack of remorse, that warranted a further discount, she said.
Bevan was sentenced to 16 months in prison on the drink-drive charge and was not granted leave to apply for home detention.
On the charge of driving while disqualified on a third or subsequent time, he was sentenced to eight months in prison, with a further three months for the breach of post-detention conditions and two months for breaching community work, to be served concurrently.
Bevan was also disqualified from driving and given leave to apply for an alcohol interlock licence upon his release.
Tracy Neal is a Nelson-based Open Justice reporter at NZME. She was previously RNZ’s regional reporter in Nelson-Marlborough and has covered general news, including court and local government for the Nelson Mail.
