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Archived Press Releases 2010 5th March 2010

Murdered store owner's widow is distraught at only one murder verdict

Guest item from Graeme Burnett, Law and Order Party New Zealand

(5th March 2010)

Parliament is soft on Crime and this absolutely proves it.

If ever a verdict should have been… guilty of murder, guilty of murder, guilty of murder, guilty of murder, guilty of murder, guilty of murder and guilty of murder it should have been in the case of the 6 accused murderers of South Auckland liquor store owner Navtej Singh. Instead we got one guilty of murder.

Six people take part in an armed liquor store hold-up and the owner Navteji Singh is cowardly shot dead by Anitelea Chan-Kee. The message to all participants in this robbery should be that they receive life in prison; we do not want people like this in our society.

The issue here is not the jury; they had to make a decision based on the law as it stands. The blame lays fair and square on Parliament and more specifically the Labour and National parties.

Of course the second insult to Mr Singh's widow Harjinder Kaur, will be the Judges sentence of Anitelea Chan-Kee to something like 13-15 years because the judge is tied by precedent. This is an out of date legal term which says basically "some other judge has already sentenced someone similar to this before so you have to do the same."

During the summing up the statement by the defence lawyer of "...that the Crown had to prove murderous intent by proving he actually appreciated he might cause his death when he pulled the trigger" is exactly the reason why we have so much of this type of crime in New Zealand.

How could Chan Kee, an adult aged 22 and the others whose age’s ranged from 19-25 think anything other than that a rifle when fired can kill.

Why would you take a firearm to a robbery and pretend that it is never going to be used, it is only there to scare. Once again that is the problem with the New Zealand justice system; it does not reflect the real world.

Then after the trial, Graeme Newell who represented one of the accused, Jason Naseri, said his client was pleased with the not guilty verdicts.

"He never thought the firearm would be used in the way it was so, he's very relieved about the murder and manslaughter acquittal, that's all that could be expected," Mr Newell said. What an insult to New Zealand and its citizens.

While the National Government grapples with raising the drivers licence age from 15 to 16, and can’t get all their Ministers to agree to lower the drink driving blood alcohol level from 80 to 50 (does that mean that some of them have a drinking problem?), all is silent about changing the law and sentencing around violent crime, assaults, hold ups and home invasions.

The Labour Party doesn’t even rate a mention in the same paragraph when it comes to law and order issues as they totally abdicated their responsibility by ignoring the referendum on Law and Order where over 90 percent of New Zealanders wanted harsher penalties.

Under the Law and Order Party of New Zealand the following would have happen to these criminals, and I quote from the LOPNZ’s website.

Robbery (6) (with an offensive weapon causing death)
Definition: The illegal demand for money, goods or similar with the use of a weapon during the robbery and the weapon is used or discharged during any part of the robbery or get away with death being caused.

• Minimum sentence: Life in prison
• Probation: Not eligible
• Participants of the Crime: All active participants in the crime e.g. get away driver, look outs and the actual perpetrators will receive the same sentence.

Why is this so hard for successive governments to change the law? The reason is they do not have the will, the fortitude or the guts to do something that will make New Zealand a safer place as they are too scared to upset the wishy washy trendy lefties.

Send a strong and tough message to would-be criminals; do this sort of thing and you will never ever, ever get out of jail. We don’t want you in our society and we don’t even want to rehabilitate you, not when you are a murderer.

Start the change, demand change, make it an issue.

Regards,

Graeme Burnett
graeme@lopnz.com
Law and Order Party New Zealand
www.lopnz.com