Melanie Coxon in the press

"I thought I was clear". Those are the words high profile media personality Duncan Garner told police when he was pulled over after driving while suspended.

Garner was charged over the offending in March. Police said at the time he had been suspended from driving for three months in December for excess demerit points.

The 52-year-old initially pleaded not guilty to driving while suspended, but on Wednesday he appeared at the Auckland District Court and admitted the charge.

"It is what it is, take the hit and move on," Garner told Stuff outside court.

Further details about what happened that evening in March can be reported after Stuff was granted access to the agreed summary of facts.

At 5.21pm on March 10, Garner was driving his car on Rutland St in central Auckland.

He was stopped by police after a complaint about his driving.

When he was pulled over, police identified him as a "suspended driver" - something Garner admitted.

"I thought I was clear. I was suspended Christmas last year. It was a standard 3 months," Garner told the officer.

In fact, according to the summary of facts, he'd been suspended on December 30, meaning his three months wasn't up.

At court on Wednesday, Melanie Coxon told Judge Terence Singh her client was a first time offender who had "made a mistake and he apologises greatly for it".

The lawyer said Garner lived in Mangawhai where there was no access to public transport to get into the Auckland CBD. She said he needed to travel into the city and also needed to cover the beginning of the election campaign.

"He runs a daily podcast, he was a political editor and has won awards," Coxon said.

Judge Singh replied that he was aware of who Garner was and his expertise.

Coxon asked for Garner to be disqualified from driving for six months - but for the sentence to begin in September.

Judge Singh made the allowance so Garner would continue working but also ordered he make a $300 donation to St John Ambulance.

Police previously told Stuff a man was before the court following an incident around 5.21pm on Symonds St on March 10.

"A police unit located the vehicle on Rutland St and carried out a traffic stop," Senior Sergeant Shaun Richardson said.

"Subsequently a [the man] was summonsed to the Auckland District Court on a charge of driving whilst suspended."

Garner, who currently hosts his own podcast, Duncan Garner: Editor in Chief, was a political editor for 3News before moving to host The AM Show.

One Auckland barrister is heeding the advice of an Australian chief justice who recently told lawyers it was time they too took responsibility for the credit crisis and unravelling global economic landscape.

An English pensioner has admitted running up a $2,275.50 cab fare traveling the North Island without the money to pay for it.

Former British Army captain Ian Lalor-Smith, aged 64, later told the police that he could travel the world for similar money and did not intend to pay.

Yesterday in the Auckland District Court he threw up his hands and yelled "thank you, Lord" when Judge Sharon McAuslan discharged him without conviction on one fraud charge.

He has repaid the driver of Discount Taxi Cabs $700.

The court heard how Lalor-Smith rang Discount Taxis on April 12 and was taken from his Auckland hotel to Dominion Rd.

He then asked the driver to take him to Taupo and charged $167.50 on his credit card — $67.50 for his Auckland fare and a $100 deposit on the North Island tour.

At Taupo Lalor-Smith told the driver he did not have a fixed destination and asked him to keep driving south.

Two and a half hours north of Wellington the driver became concerned and drove back to Auckland.

Lalor-Smith presented his credit card for the fare but it was declined.

The court heard that he did not have sufficient clear funds at the outset of the journey to pay.

Lalor-Smith's lawyer, Melanie Coxon, said he thought the journey would have been cheaper because he was familiar with the prices of English cabs.

He paid for the taxi driver's wife and children's dinner and for them to stay in a hotel for the night.

They had traveled with him in the taxi although there had not been a discount given for the family outing.

A South Waikato teenager jointly accused of murdering a Tokoroa father-of-two last year had the charge thrown out due to a lack of evidence.

The 17-year-old from Putaruru, whose name is suppressed, was due to appear in the Rotorua Youth Court today on an alternative charge of assaulting Paul Hedley after appearing in the High Court at Rotorua yesterday.

Mr Hedley, 35, died early on August 8 last year from a single stab wound to the heart. The timber worker was returning home after walking a friend to a nearby house when he was allegedly attacked by two young people.

Following a two-day hearing in the High Court in April, Justice Laurenson ruled the Putaruru teenager's statement to Detective Margaret Blackshaw inadmissible.

In the statement, he had admitted punching Mr Hedley in the stomach.

Justice Laurenson said in his ruling that the decision by the teen's aunt to waive the right to a lawyer was "not truly an informed one".

The teenager's counsel, Auckland's Melanie Coxon, argued that the teenager's aunt did not understand there was a chance her nephew would be charged with murder.

Justice Laurenson agreed, saying the moment the accused said he had punched Mr Hedley the pair should have been warned the teen was in jeopardy of being charged.

In the High Court yesterday Justice Potter threw out the charge of murder because the Crown no longer had enough evidence.

Meanwhile, an 18-year-old Tokoroa man is due to be tried for Mr Hedley's murder in the High Court at Rotorua on October 19.

Ghanaian gained NZ residency by giving false details on the medical form.

A Ghanaian with HIV has been jailed for six months for lying in his application for New Zealand residency.

In the Auckland District Court yesterday, Judge Anne Kiernan refused to grant leave to 38-year-old Ishmael Asamoah to apply for home detention.

But she did agree to give him bail pending an appeal to the High Court against sentence and possibly conviction.

Asamoah sprang to prominence last year when his Australian wife, who contracted the disease, was awarded $727,437 in a negligence action against two Sydney doctors for not telling her about his condition.

Last month Judge Kiernan found Asamoah guilty of fraudulently ticking "no" to a question on a medical form in 2000 on whether he was HIV-positive.

He then used the form to get a residency visa and residency permit.

Asamoah was able to apply as the spouse of an Australian, who has an automatic right to New Zealand residency.

The judge said Asamoah knew in 1998 he was HIV-positive.

He did not tell his wife about his condition before they married the following year and he did not tell the New Zealand authorities, as he was required to do.

The judge said the couple had separated by the time Asamoah came to New Zealand in 2001.

He now has another partner, also an Australian, but has been denied a visitor's visa to return to Australia to visit his 3-year-old daughter by his former wife.

Labour Department lawyer Jane Rushton said New Zealand residency was highly prized.

She called for a deterrent sentence to preserve the integrity of the immigration service.

Defence counsel Melanie Coxon said Asamoah ticked the "no" box as a "basic instinct for survival". He would die if he were returned to Ghana, where medical treatment was expensive and beyond his means. But Judge Kiernan said she did not accept that it was a life-and-death situation that prompted Asamoah to lie on the form.

Before coming to New Zealand, Asamoah was already receiving treatment in Australia for his HIV. He could have continued receiving treatment there.

Judge Kiernan said the aggravating features were the benefit Asamoah received in the form of his New Zealand residency and essential medical treatment costing $10,000 to $13,000 a year.

There was also the risk to people in this country.

The main aggravating feature, she said, was Asamoah's premeditation — he knew as far back as 1998 that he had the condition.

The judge said there was no evidence before her that Asamoah would be deported and returned to Ghana, where he might not have access to life-saving treatment.

Her task was to sentence him for his offence, not to assess whether or not he should remain in New Zealand.

It was important that people should be deterred from giving false information on application forms to live in New Zealand.

The Immigration Service relied on honest disclosure.

Outside the court, Immigration Service fraud investigator John Marston said Asamoah's file would be sent to Wellington to assess whether his residency should be revoked.

A former high-flying executive at Tower Insurance has escaped jail despite the "bizarre" theft of more than $100,000 which was "salted away" and not spent.

The 41-year-old employee was sentenced to 300 hours' community service for the theft of $111,634.26 and granted continued name suppression so their lawyer could get a full psychiatric report. The Sunday Star-Times was refused access to the file due to the suppression, which may be lifted later this month.

The decision of Auckland District Court Judge Roderick Joyce, QC, to allow continued name suppression raised eyebrows with police, the prosecutor and the defendant's former employer. Tower's chief executive Rob Flannagan said it was "an understatement" to say he was surprised. The defendant's lawyer had detailed a troubled private life and previously blemish-free employment history.

Flannagan said the judge "seemed to believe everything [that was] said".

The employee hadn't spent the money, due to a dissociative state which 'separated' them from the crime.

Details of the offending were last week revealed in court during sentencing, before an audience of upset former colleagues. The defendant stared at the back wall through the hearing.

In his sentencing statement, Joyce revealed the employee had salted away the money by faking invoices but had not spent it. That "extraordinary state of affairs" was due to a "dissociative" state, whereby the defendant had "separated" from the crime. The employee gained no benefit from the fraud and paid the money back when caught.

Joyce said the defendant was "intelligent and capable", and must have been aware they would be caught.

The employee was the sole breadwinner for an invalid partner and son and had been under intense pressure, taking an overdose of prescription drugs. Joyce said he wanted a full psychiatric report before revealing the defendant's name. Tower discovered the theft through an audit. Flannagan said staff wanted to attend the sentencing "for closure".