Man fails to convince court he should get same treatment as Israel Adesanya

Wednesday, 25 September 2024

Auckland man Joel Tiller was convicted for breaching protection orders by making threatening phone calls and leaving demeaning messages to two women.

His victims lived in ‘a state of constant fear’ as a result of his actions.

Tiller appealed to the High Court, then the Court of Appeal, where he cited the case of Israel Adesanya who was discharged without conviction for drink driving and said he should get the same treatment. He was unsuccessful.

A man convicted of breaching protection orders after making two women live “in a state of constant fear” appealed his conviction because he said he should have been given the same treatment as UFC fighter Israel Adesanya and be discharged without conviction.

Auckland man Joel Tiller was sentenced to 12 months supervision in September last year after pleading guilty to two charges of contravening a protection order, and one charge of resisting arrest.

In arriving at the sentence Judge Kirsten Lummis noted Tiller had already spent 86 days in custody and had been on restrictive electronically monitored bail conditions for 237 days.

Tiller’s offending involved making threatening phone calls and leaving demeaning messages to two women in breach of protection orders against him.

One woman had a nine-year-old child with Tiller. The other had been in a relationship with him.

The offending occurred between January and August 2021.

One of the women received three text messages from an unknown number, including comments of a sexual nature, in January, the Court of Appeal said in reference to the District Court judgment.

In August he called her and spoke with her for about 11 minutes, some of which was recorded. In that call, he made a veiled threat about breaching his protection order if the she did not agree to drop the order.

The other woman received a call from Tiller in July 2021 in which he said, “don’t you talk to my daughter”.

In March 2022, police pulled over Tiller while he was driving in Mt Albert. He was informed that he was under arrest for breaching bail conditions.

Tiller said: “No, I’m not under arrest” and refused to turn off his engine and step out of his car. Instead, he drove away and did not stop, despite police following with red and blue lights flashing and sirens sounding.

Police eventually cornered his car in a residential area, but he refused to get out of it and had to be forcibly extracted.

Judge Lummis said Tiller’s victims said they had experienced significant stress and “were living in a state of constant fear as a result of Mr Tiller’s actions”.

Tiller appealed his sentence to the High Court in December, representing himself. He said Judge Lummis was wrong to refuse his request for a discharge without conviction.

Tiller said the offending wasn’t serious because there were no physical or explicit threats and the consequences of the convictions were out of all proportion to his offending because they would seriously harm his employability and inhibit his hopes for future overseas travel.

Justice Laura O’Gorman said the courts had established the seriousness of breaching protection orders and noted “the psychological harm caused to a complainant by a breach [of a protection order] should not be understated”.

She said the women’s victim impact statements “demonstrated a significant level of anxiety, distress, and concern” and “Mr Tiller understates and fails to appreciate the true gravity of his offending”.

O’Gorman said the direct and indirect consequences of Tiller’s convictions did not outweigh the gravity of his offending, and dismissed his appeal.

Tiller was not happy with the decision so applied to the Court of Appeal in the hope it would permit him to make a second appeal.

He told the court his appeal was in the public interest because of the “significant inconsistencies” that had arisen across District Court decisions in relation to discharges with conviction.

He referred to three cases released this year in which discharges with conviction were granted, and said his offending was “considerably less severe” than these.

Tiller referred to media articles on the three cases.

One involved a man charged with careless driving causing death, following a tragic incident in which a five-year-old boy was accidentally killed after falling off the back of his vehicle.

Another concerned a young man who punched a 71-year-old woman three times in the head, while partaking in a protest against the speaker Posie Parker at an event in Auckland.

The other case was that of Ultimate Fighting Championship fighter Israel Adesanya who drove with excess blood alcohol. The Judge said there was a “virtual certainty” that Adesanya would lose his endorsements if convicted and a conviction would have a real and appreciable impact on Mr Adesanya’s employment and travel opportunities.

The Appeal Court said the three decisions “involve very different circumstances to Mr Tiller’s offending”.

The Judges noted that Tiller said he was very remorseful, had already experienced significant punishment in advance of sentencing, and was highly motivated to never reoffend.

Tiller also contended that the categorisation as “family violence” convictions carried “significant connotations of physical violence towards family members, which are misleading in the circumstances and likely to be highly detrimental to his employment prospects”, and that he had been unable to gain employment in his chosen field since resigning from his last job in January 2022, having been rejected for over thirty job opportunities.

The Appeal Court said there was no clear link to demonstrate that the lack of success in finding work was related to the convictions, and “difficulties in securing employments are an ordinary consequence of a conviction, and in our view in this instance that consequence must ‘yield to the employer’s right to know’”.

The Judges said Tiller’s written submissions suggested a continued failure to take responsibility for the gravity of his offending.

His application to bring a second appeal was declined by the Court of Appeal.

CORRECTION: This article has been updated to correct the description of communications with the women as outlined in the District Court judgment.