Rotorua artist, carver, and tattooist Christopher Allan Heenan has been sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of Ruakawa Newton.
Heenan was accused of stabbing Mr Newton in the chest after a friendly drinking session between the two mates in the lounge of a suburban flat turned into an argument on October 11, 2007.
A jury found him guilty of murder in February.
Sentencing Heenan in the High Court at Rotorua this morning Justice Timothy Brewer imposed a minimum non-parole period of 10 years.
Outside the court, Mr Newton's mother, Charmaine Irimako Burnett, said while the judge had sentenced her son's killer as the law directed, the law should be changed to ensure life imprisonment meant just that, life.
