Solicitor who stole wins prison appeal

The judges cited Emma Garnett's family issues. Photo / Doug Sherring

An Auckland lawyer convicted of stealing nearly $200,000 from prominent law firms has had her prison sentence quashed in favour of home detention.

Emma Jane Garnett was sentenced last year to three years in prison after pleading guilty to five charges of obtaining a pecuniary advantage by deception and three of dishonestly using a document or making false account entries at two Auckland law firms.

Garnett was a solicitor at the firms between 2002 and 2007, during which time she took approximately $188,500 from one employer and $6000 from theother.

Costs involved in investigating her dishonesty led to a loss of more than $241,000 for the first firm and $33,500 for the second, the court was told.

Garnett appealed in March. Her lawyer, Barry Hart, said she should have been granted home detention as she had no memory of the offending and might have been suffering from a dissociative disorder at the time.

She was also going through a difficult pregnancy during the court proceedings, Mr Hart told the Court of Appeal.

Before sentencing, Auckland District Court Judge Anne Kiernan had said there was no evidence of diminished responsibility, but Mr Hart said new psychological assessments showed that was not the case.

Crown prosecutor Nick Chisnall said the new assessments did not advance Garnett's case and her personal circumstances did not warrant any further reduction in sentence.

She was given a 25 per cent discount at sentencing to "comfortably encapsulate" her situation, he said.

Appeal Court judges William Young, Lester Chisholm and John Priestley said in their decision that the three-year prison term was too long in the context of Garnett's "extraordinarily difficult family circumstances".

Garnett was pregnant with her second child at the time of sentencing and also had a chronically ill 2-year-old son, and suffered severe stress when separated from her older son.

Her marriage was "tenuous", and she might suffer mental health issues or a dissociative disorder.

The three appeal judges said a sentence of two and a half years was appropriate, and although a sentence of that length would not normally be commuted to home detention, Garnett's family circumstances "point compellingly to the harshness of separating the appellant from her two children".

She appeared to have been "psychologically compromised" at the time of her offending, the judges said.

An "extremely lenient" sentence of 11 months' home detention and30 hours' community work wasordered.

Garnett must also undertake psychiatric treatment or counselling and abstain from alcohol and drugs.

- NZPA