Judge Adeane

Stuff reports:

When he appeared before Judge Adeane in Napier District Court on Tuesday the judge put him in custody until yesterday.

Looking a little sheepish after three nights in the cells, Mantell was not spared from the judge’s wrath yesterday.

When Mantell’s lawyer Leo Lafferty handed the judge some judgments for similar offending, Judge Adeane asked what use they would be “when I am known as an eccentric, idiosyncratic and some people say excessive sentencer of taggers?”

Not a great fan of precedent!

He had mixed fortunes with some of his harsher sentences of taggers, he said. Some had been upheld on appeal while others had been overturned.

He said he would like to sentence Mantell to three months’ prison for each of the 54 tags he made.

Even I think that is rather, umm, zealous. 18 years in prison for tagging.

In 2008 the judge became a local hero in Hawke’s Bay when he took a hard line on taggers, giving a series of offenders a taste of prison.

At the time he said taggers were making Hastings look like a North American slum, and he rejected suggestions graffiti was art or culture.

Graffiti crime in the district halved after he took his tough stance.

But effective.