Results for imprisonment

‘Asaeli Teulilo (32) is serving eight months imprisonment for possessing 1.3 grams of cocaine and 0.1 gram of cannabis. The Lord Chief Justice warned that harsher penalties are expected on any offences committed after November 26, 2020, involving more than 0.25 grams of a Class A drug, because they are deemed as supply.

Tevita Talia’uli Fatongiatau (33) was sentenced at the Supreme Court last week to two-years six-months imprisonment for possession of illicit drugs. He was a guest at a motel in Nuku'alofa, when he flushed some of the drugs in the toilet when Police apprehended him.

Piliote Uasike (23) was sentenced to two-years nine-months imprisonment for possession of illicit drugs and bribery of a police officer, by a Supreme Court judge who warned drug dealers to expect punishment.

A stepfather was sentenced to 12 and a half years imprisonment for numerous offences that included serious indecent assault of his two young stepdaughters and raping one of them. The mother (42) who helped him commit some of these serious sexual offences was sentenced to seven years and three months imprisonment. The judge agreed that the offendings constituted a grave breach of trust and the sentence imposed should reflect it.

Mafoa'aeata Latu (26) was sentenced to three-years and three-months imprisonment after being convicted for reckless driving that caused the death of his passenger ‘Aisake Lavelua on Hihifo Road at Fo'ui, in March this year.

Nauru has abolished its death penalty and decriminalised homosexuality after recently amending its criminal code. Tonga and Papua New Guinea remain the only two countries in the Pacific to retain the death penalty for crimes such as murder, while six Pacific countries still criminalize homosexuality, including Tonga.

The first sitting of Tonga’s Court of Appeal which ended on Wednesday, April 9, in Nuku'alofa delivered judgments, that included reducing a 16-years sentence imposed on a man who sharpened his knife and stabbed his sleeping wife 23 times. The court replaced it with 10-years imprisonment with the final two-years suspended.

A six-years imprisonment sentence was imposed on a 49-year-old father on numerous charges of incest and indecent assault, that he had repeatedly committed on his young daughter from 2005-09.