Prison for Motueka man on 11th drink drive conviction

A man who now has 11 convictions for drink driving and 10 for driving while disqualified was so angry at being sent to prison on his most recent charges that he walked out on his own sentencing.

Richard Anthony Cane left the dock in the Nelson District Court, walked past the security guard and through the door that led straight to the remand cells, as Judge Richard Russell sent him to prison on Monday for two years.

Meanwhile, his teenage son, who tried to help his dad by supplying the court with a character reference from his phone, wept quietly while Cane's partner shouted and kicked the door as she left the courtroom public gallery.

“He would be a loss to the neighbourhood if he was sent to jail,” the referee said in a statement read to the court on Cane’s behalf.

The 54-year-old orchard worker from Motueka, who said the stress of work had led him to drink, was told today there was no option but a custodial sentence, but he was granted leave to apply for home detention to a residential treatment facility if room became available.

Cane told police in the context of his recent charges that “my offending is a bit of a bastard and I need to change my attitude”.

However, Judge Russell said there was nothing he had provided that showed how he might do that.

Cane was sentenced on two charges of driving while disqualified for a third or subsequent time; one being in December last year and the other in March this year.

On December 14 last year Cane, a disqualified driver, was driving in Motueka and pulled into someone’s driveway ahead of a police checkpoint. When police caught up with him he told them he’d been disqualified, but thought that the period was by then over.

The associated charge of driving with excess blood alcohol for a third or subsequent time happened after Cane crashed his motorbike when a driver pulled out in front of him on the Moutere Highway, on the night of March 16 this year.

Judge Russell acknowledged he was not entirely at fault but the subsequent blood alcohol reading, at nearly four times the legal limit, showed he should not have been anywhere near the controls of a motor vehicle.

He said that had Cane not been drinking, and driving while disqualified, he would not have been in that place at that time.

“With that level of alcohol in your system I wouldn’t have thought you’d have known what day it was let alone been on a ride.”

Cane was found with a blood alcohol reading of 203 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood after he was taken to hospital following the crash.

The legal limit for a driver aged over 20 is 50mg per 100ml.

Judge Russell said Cane’s sentence of six months’ home detention for his most recent prior offending in September 2022 “didn’t negatively impact his lifestyle”.

Cane’s offending has occurred fairly consistently since his first conviction in 1990, with subsequent convictions in 1992, 1993, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2008, 2021 and 2022.

His history of driving while disqualified charts a similar course.

“This is a significant conviction history.

“The problem for you has been made worse by your history which runs into six pages,” Judge Russell said as Cane tried to interject.

“The commonality of charges you face means that you are unable to provide any example of how you might change your risk of reoffending, which is very high.

“It shows you have no insight into the harm you could cause to others.”

Judge Russell said an appropriate starting point for an 11th-time offender was 18 months in prison, adjusted to two years with a six-month uplift.

A further uplift of nine months was added for the charges of driving while disqualified, third or subsequent.

Judge Russell then subtracted eight months for the only mitigating circumstance, which was Cane’s early guilty pleas, to arrive at 25 months in prison, rounded off at 24 months.

“You are a danger not only to yourself but to everyone else on the road.

“You have significant contempt for the court and for the law in general,” Judge Russell told Cane as he walked out, as the option of home detention was discussed.

Cane was indefinitely disqualified again, and a warning was given that if he was caught driving again the owner of any vehicle he drove faced having it seized and confiscated.