Pearce Patrick Buckley (34) was locked up for three years two months when he appeared before the Dunedin District Court last month but, unusually, the case was recalled yesterday.
Judge Michael Turner said that while authenticating his sentencing notes he discovered he had made an error.
Buckley had been assessed by a psychiatrist as suffering from ADHD and a major depressive disorder but at last month’s hearing the judge said that was contradicted by another report by a different health professional.
However, Buckley was not the subject of that assessment — it related to another defendant being sentenced on the same day.
Judge Turner said the defendant’s mental-health issues did not play a role in his offending, but a sentence of imprisonment would be more severe for him than most.
"You might isolate yourself from staff or inmates. You might blunder into unsafe situations by talking over people or butting in," he said.
"You’re more likely to be ostracised, bullied or inadvertently break prison rules."
The judge apologised to Pearce and subtracted four months from his sentence.
The defendant was found guilty by a jury of three charges of knowingly possessing objectionable publications but continued to protest his innocence.
He gave evidence at trial that he was not looking for child-abuse material but a niche kind of pornography: tall women dominating men dressed up as babies.
‘‘You said you were not interested in what might be described as mainstream pornography because you considered it was ‘fake’. You wanted what you described as ‘the real experience’ — amateur," said Judge Turner at sentencing.
In June 2018, Buckley created an account under the name ‘‘John Parker" on the Mega website, an encrypted file storage application with more than 230 million users.
Later, Department of Internal Affairs investigators found four copies of a file in his virtual trash containing 11,000 photos of videos of horrific sex abuse and bestiality.
‘‘The offending involves violence of the most grotesque kind against children," said the judge last month.
He described Buckley’s consistent denials as "hollow".
