Police Minister Stuart Nash says, when it comes to sentences for gang members, judges in our courts need to "read the room better".

Comments, I think, are just as relevant to other cases. Such as the one which wound up in the High Court in Christchurch yesterday with 18-year-old Khanye Te HeuHeu being sent to prison for five-and-a-half years for killing 16-year-old Zion Purukamu at a birthday party at an Airbnb property in Fendalton.

A crime, by the way, that this guy has apparently shown no remorse for and a crime he only admitted to after the original charge of murder was downgraded to manslaughter. He had denied the murder charge, because he says what he did was in self-defence.

I’m not sure how stabbing someone in the back is self-defence, but there you go.

So the sentencing judge was already limited in what she could do yesterday because, despite the fact that a 16-year-old went out to a birthday party in August 2021 and never came home because some guy at the party got angry with him and stabbed him to death, the judge had to limit the sentence to one appropriate for manslaughter.

But, boy, did she get it wrong. In my eyes anyway.

I've commented before about jail sentences and there have been a couple recent of cases, in particular, where I’ve thought that the judge did the right thing and the wrong thing.

One of them was the prison sentence handed down to the young guy who was responsible for that terrible car crash near Timaru where five teenagers died. One of them was in the boot.

That guy got two-and-a-half years and, at the time, I said that I thought the judge had done the right thing and the wrong thing.

I felt it was the right thing to send him to prison because of the fact that his stupidity had cost five people their lives. But I felt it was the wrong thing too, because what good would come of him being locked inside with other crims?

And this sentencing in the High Court in Christchurch yesterday is another one of those cases where I could say that the judge did the right thing and the wrong thing.

The judge certainly did the right thing sending him to prison. But we could also say, couldn’t we, that she did the wrong thing because sending an 18-year-old to prison for five-and-a-half-years is probably also going to sentence them to a lifetime.

But when someone walks out the door on a Friday night with a knife in their pocket, they lose all sympathy from me.

And so, in this case, the judge did the right thing sending him to prison - but where she went wrong, was sending him away for just for just five-and-a-half years.

Because he went to that party with a knife. His intent was clear that night. I know he probably didn’t go to the party planning to kill someone, but he went there that night thinking that if anyone gives him trouble, they’ll get it.

And that’s what happened. As reported from court yesterday, the victim Zion Purukamu confronted Te HeuHeu about kissing a girl that Zion and his friends considered to be too intoxicated to know what she was doing and so they asked Te HeuHeu to leave.

He took exception to that, he refused to leave, and a fight broke out. The fight continued in the driveway and that was when Te HeuHeu pulled a knife from his clothing and stabbed Zion. He also stabbed two of Zion’s mates.

Thankfully, they survived. But it was a different story, though, for Zion and his family - some of whom spoke at the sentencing yesterday and who were extremely upset when the judge said she was imposing the five-and-a-half year sentence.

The Crown's starting point for sentencing was 12 years but the judge, taking into account Te HeuHeu's age at the time of the offending (he was 16), his guilty plea and elements of his upbringing and background, settled on the five-and-a-half years.

The background stuff the judge was referring to was the lack of contact Te HeuHeu had with his father during his formative years, the impact of having a stepfather and half-siblings join the family, his connection with the local Black Power gang which he had been prospecting for, and his use of methamphetamine.

So a starting point of 12 years, take all those things into account, and you settle on a five-and-a-half year sentence.

But when someone gets that level of sentence for killing someone with a knife and stabbing two other people, in my honest opinion they have got away with the proverbial murder.