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The Court of Appeal has dismissed Arthur William Taylor's appeal against his conviction and sentence for his part in a 2005 prison escape from Rimutaka Prison, near Wellington.
Taylor, 51, had appealed a 2006 High Court decision convicting him of three charges of kidnapping and one charge of escaping lawful custody.
The judges ruled 2-1 that Justice Ronald Young correctly ruled Taylor could not plead "previous acquittal" in connection to three kidnapping charges, despite having charges of aggravated wounding dropped just before his trial.
One judge, Justice John Fogarty, said he would have set aside the kidnapping charges once Taylor pleaded "previous acquittal", saying the offences of aggravated wounding and kidnapping were substantially the same.
Justices Robert Chambers and Graham Panckhurst disagreed. Justice Chambers said that as there was no former trial on the aggravated wounding charges, Taylor was never in jeopardy of conviction.
Justice Chambers said the law should not be strained so Taylor could reap an undeserved benefit.
All three Court of Appeal judges dismissed Taylor's argument in relation to the escaping lawful custody charge that Justice Young didn't properly allow him to argue that he wasn't in lawful custody.
Taylor had escaped Rimutaka Prison along with former fellow inmate Manu Royal, who was armed with an air pistol, as he was taken from the prison to a family group conference in central Wellington in March 2005. He was arrested about an hour later.
Taylor said he wasn't in lawful custody because the superintendent of the prison who purported to authorise the outing to the family group conference did not have the requisite authority.
The Court of Appeal also upheld the sentence of four years imprisonment, with a minimum non-parole period of two years, for escaping from custody and a concurrent term of one year for the kidnapping charges.
Taylor has spent 32 of the last 35 years in jail. At his sentencing last year the court was told Taylor had more than 130 convictions and had escaped on six previous occasions, twice from prison and four times from lawful custody.
His escapes include fleeing with three of the country's most dangerous prisoners 10 years ago from the maximum security Auckland Prison at Paremoremo. They were caught after 10 days near the small Coromandel Peninsula township of Tairua.
One of Taylor's fellow escapers in 1998 was convicted murderer Graeme Burton, who said he would go down in a hail of bullets. Burton last year killed Wainuiomata man Karl Kuchenbecker in the hills above Lower Hutt after breaching parole.
- NZPA
