Publicity about a 16-year-old Cromwell high school pupil nearly dying after drinking vodka last month has had a ''significant impact'' on an 18-year-old woman facing a charge in connection with the incident, the Alexandra District Court was told yesterday.
The defendant appeared before justices of the peace Bill Townsend and Joy McDonald yesterday and entered no plea to a charge of supplying alcohol to a girl under 18 at Cromwell on August 13.
She was given interim name suppression and the case was adjourned to November 5.
Duty solicitor Justine Baird said the defendant had been offered diversion by police and hoped to complete it, but prosecutor Sergeant Ian Collin said the woman had not been offered diversion.
He asked for the case to be adjourned so a ''number of factors'' could be canvassed before the option of diversion was considered.
Sgt Collin said vodka had been supplied to a person who passed it on to another teenager, who ended up in hospital after drinking it.
In newspaper reports of the incident last month, police said when found by a member of the public on a Cromwell street that night, the teenager was unresponsive, hypothermic, and possibly only an hour away from death.
Miss Baird said the media coverage of the incident had a ''significant impact'' on the defendant.
The background to the charge was that the woman had supplied alcohol to a friend who was having a 16th birthday party, but believed the party would be supervised by the girl's parents.
''She asked all the right questions and trusted her friend but that trust was breached.''
The person who received the alcohol had shared it with someone else and the defendant did not know the ''victim'', Miss Baird said.
''She didn't set out to cause any harm ... the consequence of this was something that could not have been foreseen by this young lady.''
There was ''no real public interest'' in this case and publishing the defendant's name would have a major impact on the woman's future.
Some of the people involved in the incident and its aftermath were ''upset'' about how the incident was portrayed in the media, she said.
Sgt Collin opposed name suppression being granted.
There was ''significant public interest'' in any case in which alcohol ''has been supplied to young children who were subsequently hospitalised,'' he said.
Sgt Collin suggested medical evidence should be produced at the next court appearance to back up Miss Baird's submission the defendant was receiving treatment for depression.
