A father who washed his son's bloody clothing after the killing of a man at Warrington 16 months ago has been sentenced to home detention.
Dean Robert Carruthers (48), was dealt with in the High Court at Dunedin today for his part in the unlawful death of 23-year-old Jamie Ellis on April 15 last year.
Carruthers was originally jointly charged with murdering Mr Ellis, with his son Mark and Peter Richard Holmes.
But he pleaded to lesser charges of being an accessory after the fact of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm and the crime of assault and was today sentenced to seven months' home detention.
As he stood in the dock awaiting sentence, Carruthers apologised to the dead man's parents. He said he wished he had never ''taken the boys up there''.
His role in the crime was to drive his son and Holmes back to Dunedin after the killing and to later wash Mark Carruthers' blood-stained clothing.
Sentencing him, Justice Ronald Young acknowledged Carruthers' significant cognitive disabilities, the result of a brain injury suffered in a serious accident 30 years ago.
The judge said he accepted that, because of those disabilities, prison would be harder for Carruthers than for an ordinary person. And he agreed a sentence of home detention would meet the necessary denunciation and deterrence required.
Carruthers had been assisting his son, not Holmes who had committed the murder. But what he had done was seriously wrong as it was destroying evidence and could have hampered the police inquiry.
''You helped two men kill another,'' the judge told Carruthers.
And he said the victim impact report showed the emotional trauma and lifelong pain such a death caused a family.
''As a father, you should understand, they find it difficult to understand how you could have helped the killers of their son,'' Justice Young said.
