"Two wrongs don't make a right"

Ruapehu Bulletin, 24 June 1997, Page 10

"Two wrongs don't make a right"

Francis Frank Matangi, 40, unemployed of Wanganui, pleaded guilty to intentionally damaging two glass window panes valued at $227 on 27 May. Matangi had gone to a property in Bracken Street, Ohakune, at 11.20pm to confront a person he believed had been involved in an earlier attack on his daughter. This person had offered to take Matangi 's daughter home but had instead taken her elsewhere where she had been viciously attacked by three other persons, according to defence counsel Wayne Heedegen. At the Bracken Street address the person Matangi

was seeking refused to come out and this had angered and enraged his client who had kicked in the two windows in frustration. Matangi had since said he was sorry for his actions but he had been provoked by the "cowardly and villainous" attack on his daughter. Judge Ross told Matangi that no matter what degree of provocation was involved "two wrongs don't make a right" and nothing justified anyone to take the law into their own hands. He told Matangi, who had been drinking, that it was probably a prudent decision of the person inside the house, not to come out and confront Matangi in person at that time of night ... "he must have decided discretion was the better part of valour". Judge Ross advised Matangi to seek redress for the attack on his daughter through legal channels available to him. Matangi was convicted and fined $200, court costs $95 and ordered to make reparation of $227.71.