New Zealand's highest profile ex-prisoner and jailhouse lawyer Arthur Taylor has been recalled to prison this morning on serious drug charges.
Arthur Taylor after his release on parole in 2019. Photo: RNZ
Police arrived at his home in Dunedin, where he has been living on parole, late this morning and arrested him.
He faces several different serious drug charges, some of which carry a maximum penalty of life imprisonment, he told the Otago Daily Times before his arrest.
He said all he knew was that the allegations stemmed from between 1 February and 3 June, while he was living in Wellington.
Taylor said the laying of the charges was completely unexpected. There had been no search warrants executed at his property and he said he had not been found with any illicit substances.
"I was flabbergasted. I've bloody well been through some nonsense in the past, but this ... These are serious bloody charges."
Taylor was adamant he was innocent of the allegations and said he would enter not guilty pleas when he appeared in court.
He was granted parole in January last year after being denied 19 times previously.
Taylor was serving 17 and a half years for charges of explosives, firearms, kidnapping and conspiracy to supply methamphetamine, among other crimes. The sentence was not due to end until 2022.
He was initially paroled to Dunedin and then moved to Wellington at the end of the year but was recalled to prison in June after being charged with possessing meth and breaching release conditions.
Those matters were set down for a judge-alone trial in the capital in February and Taylor was confident the charges would be thrown out.
More pressing was a recall hearing with the Parole Board in January which would decide whether or not he would continue serving the remainder of his 17-year term.
The sentence ends in 2022.
A police spokeswoman said she couldn't comment on Taylor's arrest. However, police did confirm they assisted with a parole recall warrant in Dunedin this morning.
The Department of Corrections has been approached for comment.
Almost 40 years of Taylor's life has been spent in custody due to his more than 150 convictions for offences including bank robbery, burglary, fraud and drugs.
In recent years Taylor has become better known as the "jailhouse lawyer" after a series of successful court cases.
These included the 2017 prosecution and trial of Roberto Conchie Harris - secret "Witness C" - for perjury at David Tamihere's double-murder trial in 1990.
He was also instrumental in the courts ruling that denying New Zealand's prisoners the right to vote was inconsistent with the Bill of Rights, and challenged the legality of the prison smoking ban.
- Otago Daily Times