Photo: RNZ / Rebekah Parsons-King
An arsonist has avoided a jail sentence after a restorative justice meeting with his victims, which ended with a handshake and the offer of thousands of dollars in reparation.
Forestry worker Fletcher Paul Johnson, 30, set a fire at a Napier house after a party in March 2022.
While at the party, he was confronted and became angry and embarrassed when one of the two women living at the house saw him take a $20 note from the top of a freezer in the kitchen and put it in his pocket.
In the early hours of the morning, when the occupants and other guests had gone to bed, he placed a wheelie bin, recycling bins and plastic under a palm tree and next to a punga fence outside.
Using a lighter, he set fire to the contents of the wheelie bin.
The fire ignited the tree and spread along the punga fence down the side of the house. Electrical wiring in an air conditioning unit began to burn, as did a plastic downpipe on the building.
"The risk to life was very high, Mr Johnson," Judge Gordon Matenga said in the Napier District Court on Friday.
"Thankfully, there was no loss of life or injury to any person."
Judge Matenga sentenced Johnson to 12 months of home detention on charges of arson, theft of the $20 and interference with a motor vehicle on the property the same night.
As the fire took hold, a camera on a neighbouring property showed Johnson walking to the rear of the property, from where he watched the fire and heard the commotion as the occupants of the house evacuated.
One of the occupants tackled the blaze with a garden hose until emergency services turned up.
Johnson then went up to one of the firefighters and said, "I was inside and noticed the fire and I went out and put it out for you", according to a Crown summary of facts.
Crown prosecutor Michael Blashcke argued for a sentence of imprisonment, saying "the defendant was incredibly lucky that more serious damage wasn't caused" to the house, to neighbouring properties, or to life.
But defence counsel Sheila Cameron said Johnson had "done everything he could to put things right" since the night of the fire, of which he remembered very little after taking both alcohol and an illicit drug.
He had put himself through alcohol and drug counselling and attended restorative justice with the women who lived at the house.
He had also offered to pay $5000 to the women immediately, and more money in instalments to the landlord of the rented property.
Judge Matenga said the restorative justice meeting meant Johnson had heard from the women about how the fire had affected them.
One of the women said in a victim impact statement that the stress meant she had become unable to work and she had lost her job. The other felt violated and had become very anxious and suspicious, constantly checking who was coming and going.
Despite this, the women "were not out for your blood", Judge Matenga said.
They went to the restorative justice meeting not to interrogate Johnson, but to seek some understanding of what had happened, and they wanted to "be able to see you out in public and say hello", the judge said.
"They wanted you to learn your lesson, rather than see you in prison," Judge Matenga said.
He called this "therapeutic justice in action". The meeting had ended with a handshake.
Judge Matenga said that he had put considerable thought into whether Johnson should be sentenced to home detention rather than prison and had decided to give him that opportunity.
A significant factor in his decision was the work Johnson had done towards a reparation package for the victims.
In addition to the home detention, Judge Matenga ordered Johnson to pay reparation of $3000 to the women, plus $1000 for each of them for emotional harm, within 28 days. He will pay a further $5000 to their landlord in instalments.
Johnson has home detention and post-detention conditions not to possess or consume alcohol or non-prescription drugs, and to attend any counselling recommended by an assessment.
* This story originally appeared in the New Zealand Herald.