The Crown have appealed the $450,000 compensation awarded to an individual sentenced to 7 years jail for an indecent assault charge.

Daniel Fitzgerald was convicted after forcibly kissing a woman on Wellington's Cuba St, his third-strike offence after incurring two other indecent assault convictions.

Otago University law expert Andrew Geddis says the Crown is arguing against compensating Fitzgerald because the prosecutor chose to bring these indecent assault charges forward. 

"What the High Court found was that the prosecutor ought to have looked at this case, recognised that that was a disproportionate sentence for the fact for what he did and not brought those charges." 

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