The author of blogging site Kiwisfirst will spend six weeks in prison for contempt after he lost his Supreme Court appeal. Share on twitter Share on email Share on facebook Share on print More Sharing Services 0 13 July 2013 New Zealand blogger Vince Siemer will spend the next six weeks behind bars after he lost his final appeal against jail time for ignoring a court order. Siemer, who runs a blog called Kiwisfirst, was charged with contempt in 2010 after he published a High Court pre-trial judgment about the 2007 Urewera raids. The judgment was suppressed. Siemer was sentenced to six weeks imprisonment for disobeying the court-ordered suppression, a sentence he later challenged in the Court of Appeal. He lost that bid and took the case to a four-judge panel in the Supreme Court - his final chance to get out of jail. In a majority decision, his appeal was dismissed and he was ordered to surrender himself to the Auckland High Court on Monday morning to commence his sentence. That was despite Chief Justice Dame Sian Elias siding with the blogger, saying she would have quashed the sentence. She argued the initial judge did not have the power to impose the suppression order and said she would have allowed Siemer's appeal. But Justice John McGrath, Justice William Young and Justice Susan Glazebrook disagreed and shot down the appeal. "The appellant knew of the order when he breached it and must have realised he was at risk of being held in contempt," those judges said in their ruling. "It is not the fact that he was critical of the judge's decision that makes the appellant's conduct contemptuous. It is his defiance of the court order." Siemer has previously spent time in prison for similar breaches of court orders.
Elias agreed with Vince the order was invalid. That makes it a void order. Void orders can be ignored. Proceedings based on void orders are also void. So says Lord Denning. More on void orders here http://www.scribd.com/doc/97250300/Shirley-Lewald-The-Void-Order
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