Results for From the Courts

Christopher Ta'ufo'ou (30) was sentenced to two-years and three-months imprisonment after being convicted of possessing 635.54 grams of cannabis, seized at a home in Malapo on March 17, 2017.

A 42-year-old man, who was sentenced to nine-months imprisonment by the Magistrate’s Court in October for stealing a generator, had his sentence quashed after his appeal to the Supreme Court was allowed.

An appeal by Tonga's Attorney General is challenging the decision by a Supreme Court judge to discharge a man who possessed meth.

A 35-year-old woman who was convicted of serious fraudulent conversion by a government servant in Vava’u was sentenced to three-years and three-months imprisonment on December 10, at the Supreme Court in Nuku'alofa.

A man who admitted purchasing and smoking meth, after pleading guilty to possession of illicit drugs, was discharged without conviction after a judge found he had 0.52 grams of methamphetamine left in a small bag, when police searched his trousers pocket. In acquitting Maika Maile (38) Justice Niu considered the amount of meth was “so infinitesimal”.

A 16-year-old boy who assaulted and robbed a Chinese shopkeeper in February this year was discharged without conviction by a Supreme Court judge on November 26 in Nuku'alofa who considered that: “a conviction for such a serious offence as robbery will be far more detrimental than the injury and theft he committed to the complainant."

A single 20-year-old man who was convicted of raping a woman last year in Tongatapu was sentenced to four-years and six-months imprisonment at the Supreme Court in Nuku'alofa.

Five men who were arrested on November 15 after illicit drugs and a pistol were seized in a vehicle during a police routine traffic stop on Hihifo Road and at a property in Fangaloto, appeared at the Fasi Magistrate's Court on November 26.

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.