A man who brawled with a police officer for 20 minutes in the car park of a North Otago pub has had his appeal emphatically knocked back.
It made little difference to Stuart Frederick Bowler – he has already served the five-month prison sentence that was imposed at the Oamaru District Court in August last year.
The defendant was charged with assaulting a police officer with intent to obstruct after an incident in October, 2021.
Senior Constable Peter Scott saw Bowler driving and activated his lights and siren, prompted the man to pull into the Kurow Hotel.
He informed the defendant there was a warrant for his arrest for failing to appear in court.
Justice Christine Grice, who heard Bowler’s appeal in the High Court at Timaru last month, called what followed “a protracted scuffle”.
For 15-20 minutes the officer of 22 years attempted to arrest the man as he violently resisted.
The defendant flailed his arms around, shoved the senior constable in the chest and face, grabbed his arms, hit him, scratched his face, kicked him in the leg, and spat at him.
The victim pepper-sprayed Bowler at least twice and tackled him to the ground before hauling him onto a bench outside the pub.
Two local men came to the officer’s assistance and helped him to apply handcuffs to the appellant.
Bowler denied the charge and took the matter to a judge-alone trial.
The judge found the evidence of the victim and the two independent bystanders overwhelmed the defendant’s version of events, which was dismissed as “not credible”.
Bowler claimed his spitting was to remove the pepper spray from his mouth but that was contradicted by the other witnesses.
Despite Snr Const Scott driving a marked police vehicle and wearing uniform, the defendant said he had reason to believe he was not a police officer, since he had heard he had been fired years earlier.
Bowler’s recent appeal was just as calamitous as his defence at trial.
His notice of appeal, Justice Grice noted, did not even specify whether he was challenging the sentence or the conviction.
Rather than the evidence or the approach taken by the sentencing judge, Bowler instead chose to focus on an Independent Police Conduct Authority complaint he made in 2020 about being trespassed from a bar.
“None of these matters go to the merits of the appeal,” said Justice Grice.
She had no jurisdiction to make any ruling on the unrelated trespass issue, she said.
