A transgender woman has lost a bid for home detention after attacking her partner with a claw hammer, stating prison was unsuitable for her given her sexual identification.

Jazz ‘Ra’ Rima-Samuels, named as David Rima-Samuels in court, through her counsel Kerry Tustin, also told Judge Noel Cocurullo in the Hamilton District Court that she had been “a long-time victim” of her partner’s violence and he was in breach of an intensive supervision sentence at the time of the attack.

Tustin urged the judge not to send her client to jail and issue a home detention sentence as prison was “very difficult for her”.

“She is technically still a male so is in a man’s prison.

“We can’t, however, get her bail addresses to men’s facilities because they believe she will be a distraction.

“We can’t get her bail to a women’s facility because she’s not technically a woman.

“So because of who she is, given her period of time in incarceration, and given her own personal history, prison has been very difficult for her.

“She is a person who is significantly fragile by nature because of her sexual orientation which ... it’s not a choice.

“You don’t choose to be transgender.”

Being transgender was something she still had “significant issues with” and caused her to be more reactive than others “which was proven on this day,” Tustin said.

‘I f****** killed him with a hammer’

Rima-Samuels went to the victim’s property on the evening of October 6, last year.

At 10.30pm, he asked her to leave and they became involved in a heated argument, which saw Rima-Samuels pick up a claw hammer and strike him with it to the front of the head, just above the eye.

The pair kept arguing and they moved outside the front door, with Rima-Samuels throwing the victim’s phone onto the road.

She then struck him twice more to the head with the hammer, causing two “large wounds”.

The victim retreated inside with blood streaming down his head.

He then locked himself in the house, while Rima-Samuels repeatedly banged on the door and a window telling him to come out.

She left and started yelling at motorists as they drove past the house.

Police were eventually called by someone who heard her say, “I f****** killed him with a hammer”.

They found the victim lying on a bed inside with serious injuries and found the hammer on the grass near the front door.

When spoken to by police, Rima-Samuels admitted striking the victim saying she “got the better of him”.

She remembered blood up her arm and his arm and thought she had killed him.

When asked if she wanted to hurt him, she said “I was wild, yeah, yeah” before stating she had been acting defensively, referring to earlier incidents between them.

The victim suffered two wounds, 4cm to 5cm long, to his forehead which required stitches.

‘Not something she should get discount for’

While acknowledging the history of family violence between the pair, crown solicitor Scarlett Hartstone said the victim was attacked to his head, in his own home, after Rima-Samuels refused to leave.

The victim impact statement showed the effects had been not only physical but also psychological.

As for issues being a transgender person in prison, Hartstone said prisons had steps in place to ensure people’s safety.

“I accept it will be difficult but it isn’t something the prison authorities haven’t dealt with and it’s not something she should get a discount for.”

After taking a starting point of three years in jail, Judge Cocurullo issued various discounts before getting down to 19 months.

However, he declined to convert that to home detention.

“This was very serious violence, no matter the background.

“You have taken to the victim with a hammer, to the head. That’s just going to do some damage.

“You’ve done it repeatedly in circumstances, from your own admission, you were wild and occurred in a domestic setting at his place.”

Belinda Feek is an Open Justice reporter based in Waikato. She has worked at NZME for nine years and has been a journalist for 20.