Prominent criminal lawyer Emma Priest has joined the ranks of leading lawyers on LawFuel’s Power List as a result of both her work as an effective advocate and an effective legal educator.

Emma Priest’s two-decade journey has been marked by versatility and a career as a criminal lawyer, a job she loves as she recently wrote – notching up over 100 jury trials and appellate cases involving violence, sexual offenses, and complex drug crimes.

• Christopher Tean Salt told jurors at his murder trial that he used full force to kick Tofimua Matagi in the head and stomp on him four times.

• He said he thought Matagi was a 501 refuge and that he had a gun, neither of which turned out to be true.

• Prosecutors countered Salt’s testimony with CCTV of the attack, describing his explanation as “nonsense”.

A murder defendant who blindsided an unsuspecting darts opponent with a punch to the head inside a Mt Roskill bar before kicking the man’s face and stomping on his head four times has told a jury his intent that night had initially been to serve as a peacemaker.

But Christopher Tean Salt, 36, acknowledged his tactic switched from pacifism to a burst of sudden, extreme violence. It came, he claimed, after a succession of faux pas during the dart game in which the new acquaintance first tried to buy drugs from him on credit, then suggested he could set Salt up with a drug supplier, then seemed to seek advice on how to rob the bar before the final insult: threatening Salt’s life.

A young man with previously undiagnosed Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) and an intellectual disability “fell through the cracks” in prison and went on to shank four people while inside two Auckland jails.

Sione Tupoumalohi, 29, first spent time inside an adult jail as a 13-year-old in Tonga. Once returning to New Zealand, he has not spent more than a year outside since he was 15, his lawyer told the court on Wednesday.

While a neuropsychologist’s report in 2011 indicated he may have FASD, it went undiagnosed until September of this year. He also has probable ADHD, a traumatic brain injury and an intellectual disability. All these meant he finds it extremely hard to stop and think before acting out, the court heard.

On Wednesday, Tupoumalohi was sentenced to six years imprisonment after he previously admitted four charges of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm. Justice Rebecca Edwards said this has to be served on top of the nine year sentence he’s already serving for previous offending.

A Whanganui man has been jailed for leading a methamphetamine manufacturing operation in a remote wool shed.

A police operation uncovered the laboratory up the Whanganui River along with 19.3kg of meth with a wholesale value of around $3.5 million.

Peter Allan Graham was sentenced to 13 years and five months’ imprisonment when he appeared in the Whanganui District Court on October 24 after admitting charges related to the Whanganui meth operation, and a separate Christchurch incident involving conspiring to manufacture meth.

The 48-year-old pleaded guilty to five charges including manufacturing methamphetamine, possessing methamphetamine for supply, participating in an organised criminal group, escaping police custody and conspiracy to manufacture methamphetamine.

Four men appeared in Whanganui District Court on separate dates, they were facing a raft of charges relating to the manufacture of 19.3kg of methamphetamine in Whanganui.

It was Himatjit Singh Kahlon’s generous and helping nature that saw him fooled into unknowingly helping a trusted friend with the methamphetamine operation behind the meth-laced beer can which killed an innocent man, a court has heard.

Aiden Sagala, 21, died in Auckland City Hospital in March 2023 after sipping from a can containing liquid meth, which he believed was beer given to him by Kahlon, who was his boss at Fonterra.

Kahlon, 41, was subsequently charged with manslaughter and possession of meth and cocaine for supply.

He denies the charges and is on trial before Justice Kiri Tahana at the Auckland High Court.

Himatjit Singh Kahlon is facing trial at the Auckland High Court, regarding the death of Aiden Sagala in 2023, after he drank beer laced with meth.DAVID WHITE / STUFF

Defence lawyer Emma Priest said in her closing remarks on Thursday that there was a power imbalance between Kahlon and his friend, who previously pleaded guilty to importing a large quantity of meth and ephedrine, hidden in beer cans, coconut water and kombucha bottles.

Warning: This includes descriptions of extreme violence and torture

Kidnapping victim Kayla Pawa was tortured with a blowtorch, beaten with a baseball bat and instructed to dig her own grave during her nearly month-long gang abduction last year.

Today one of the men responsible for her suffering, Carlos Harris, has been sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment, with a mandatory prison term of four years.

During the abduction, Pawa was kept at a series of secret locations across Auckland and Northland and subjected to violence in the hope she would be persuaded either through fear or force to show them how to raid her partner’s online cryptocurrency stash.

Harris, otherwise known as C-los Duzit, has been in custody since he turned himself in after being the subject of a high-profile manhunt last July following Pawa’s escape from a car boot in Tikipunga, Whangārei. He pleaded guilty to one kidnapping charge earlier this year.

The first inspection of the country’s strictest prison unit – reserved for the most dangerous and complex prisoners – has found the regime is unnecessarily rigorous at times and long stints in social confinement have a “huge” impact on inmates.

The Prisoners of Extreme Risk Unit (Peru) at Auckland Prison has been described as the “SAS of prisons”. It was set up in 2019 after the Christchurch terror attacks to house the terrorist responsible and was made permanent in 2023.

The first inspection of the unit was conducted in July 2023 and found prisoners seldom left their cells and had little human contact, and that this could lead to profound and enduring physical and psychological effects.

young couple found to have been criminally responsible for the dragging death of 18-year-old Connor Boyd outside an Auckland Central nightclub in 2022 can now be identified for the first time after declining to elevate a years-long name suppression battle to the Supreme Court.

They are manslaughter convicts Kaiya Shute and William Allister Grace.

Shute’s latest battle for permanent name suppression ended last month, with the Court of Appeal rejecting her bid. However, she was given 20 working days to consider whether she would challenge the Court of Appeal decision. The deadline lapsed this evening.

Grace, her now ex-boyfriend, did not seek continued name suppression. However, the courts had until now barred him from being named because doing so might have led to Shute’s identification.

A man with a significant criminal history who randomly stabbed two young Burger King employees - including a 16-year-old who needed life-saving surgery - had been suffering methamphetamine-induced psychosis.

The symptoms, including voices and delusions, have persisted to the point where the man continues over a year later to be treated for schizophrenia.

The diagnosis of defendant Ethan Simon, 27, was discussed at length during two subsequent hearings over the past two weeks as Manukau District Court Judge Janey Forrest considered what sentence would be appropriate for someone dangerous to the community but with persistent cognitive and mental health disabilities that make prison a less-than-ideal solution.

The judge settled on an end sentence of three years and nine months’ imprisonment - down significantly from the 11 years and nine months he would have faced without any reductions. Her sentence announcement was paired with criticism that the mental health and criminal justice systems had let Simon down in the past.

A young woman who was imprisoned earlier this year after a jury found her guilty of contributing to the death of 18-year-old Connor Boyd outside an Auckland Central nightclub has lost a third bid for name suppression.

But she cannot yet be named while her lawyers consider whether to pull stumps on the years-long battle or to try one more appeal, this time with the Supreme Court.

In a 45-page decision released today, the Court of Appeal also rejected her bid for a reduced prison sentence.