Dr Jarrod Gilbert Sociologist
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Don Brash's brave and remarkable speech.

16/6/2015

6 Comments

 
PictureDon Brash speak with Teina Pora and Mikaere Oketpa (aka Michael October) before speaking at the launch of NZPIP
Dr Don Brash gave a speech at the launch of the New Zealand Public Interest Project (NZPIP) on issues on injustice. It was stunningly good. Here it is: 


Forty years ago, I met Pat Booth for the first time.  He was working to prove that Arthur Allan Thomas had been wrongly convicted, and that to gain his conviction the Police had fabricated evidence.  I was shocked.  I had been brought up to believe that the New Zealand Police were beyond reproach in every respect.

Pat Booth told me of a number of cases where he was quite certain that the Police had planted evidence.  One I remember involved a man Pat interviewed in jail.  The man had been convicted of breaking into a safe and stealing its contents.  He told Pat that when the Police first arrested him, they searched his car for incriminating evidence, and found none.  They later took him and his car to the Police station, and searched the car again.  Lo and behold, this time they found some detonators underneath the driver’s seat.  The man didn’t claim to be innocent – indeed, he admitted his guilt – but, as he told Pat, “I don’t drive around with a bunch of detonators underneath me bum!”

I still believe that the New Zealand Police force is among the very best in the world – largely free of corruption and largely free of the temptation to plant incriminating evidence.

I similarly believe that the New Zealand justice system is among the very best in the world.

But we all know that miscarriages of justice sometimes occur.  Police are sometimes guilty of planting evidence to incriminate people whose guilt they are convinced of.  They are sometimes influenced by bias and preconceptions. Juries and judges sometimes get it wrong.  Why does that happen?  Mainly because, like the rest of us, Police, judges and juries are human.  They can and do make mistakes.

In the United States, more than 300 people on death row have been exonerated after being found to have been wrongly convicted.  There is little doubt that many others have been executed for crimes they did not commit.  Since 1989, a total of 1250 innocent prisoners have been released according to the National Registry of Exonerations. 

In the United Kingdom, the Criminal Cases Review Commission was set up in the mid-nineties following public disquiet over a number of unsound convictions dating back to the seventies.  To date, over 70% of the cases which the Commission has referred back to the Court of Appeal had their appeal upheld.  This British experience has led Sir Thomas Thorp to estimate that there may be 20 people wrongly convicted in New Zealand jails at any one time.

And certainly I know of no reason to believe that the situation in New Zealand would be fundamentally different to that in the United Kingdom.

We know that Arthur Allan Thomas was convicted on planted evidence.

We know that Teina Pora was wrongly convicted.

We know that there are very grave doubts about the soundness of Peter Ellis’s conviction.

It was reading Lynley Hood’s remarkable book, “A City Possessed”, which convinced me that there was something very seriously wrong with Peter Ellis’s conviction.  The book shocked me profoundly.  There seemed to be just so many flaws in the case against Peter Ellis that I found it utterly incomprehensible how any court could have found him guilty – and simultaneously see nothing odd about the charges against four women initially charged alongside him being withdrawn.

The book prompted Katherine Rich and me to launch a petition calling for an independent review of Peter’s conviction in 2003.  We were both in Parliament at the time and had limited time to canvass for signatures.  Katherine thought we might get 30 or 40 signatures.  I thought we might get more than 100.  In the event, we got more than 4,000 signatures without even trying very hard.

And it was not just the number of signatures the petition attracted.  It was the particular people who signed the petition – David Lange, Mike Moore, Winston Peters, Rodney Hide, Judith Collins, Clem Simich, David Parker, Chris Finlayson, 11 law professors, umpteen QCs – not the kind of people who lightly sign petitions of any kind.

Despite the total absence of any solid evidence that a crime had actually been committed by anybody, despite the utterly preposterous nature of some of the assertions of the very young children who testified to what they remembered, despite the now irrefutable evidence that the memory of very young children is often highly unreliable, despite one of the key Crown witnesses recanting on her evidence subsequent to the original trial, in the eyes of the justice system Peter Ellis remains a convicted child molester, and his life has been utterly ruined.

And the impact of that conviction has been extremely serious not just for Peter’s life.  There can’t be much doubt that the conviction has deterred many men from having anything to do with early childhood education, with the inevitable result that far too many children have no positive contact with male role models until much later in life.  The social costs of the conviction have therefore been enormous.

Leave it to the court system to sort out, argue those who see no need to establish a body like the UK Criminal Cases Review Commission in New Zealand.

But as Herald writer Brian Rudman noted in an article calling for the establishment of a Criminal Cases Review Commission in New Zealand late last year, “the problem with leaving it to the court system is the emphasis is about process, and did the lower courts make any errors in law, or break any trial conventions”, rather than making any wide-ranging inquiry as to whether a miscarriage of justice has occurred.[1]

I still strongly believe there needs to be an independent inquiry into Peter Ellis’s conviction but I also believe strongly that New Zealand needs a Criminal Cases Review Commission.

(For more information on the NZPIP see the website)

[1] New Zealand Herald, 29 October 2014.


6 Comments
Jocelyn Walker
16/6/2015 02:52:04 pm

Excellent speech, I was interested in the signatures on the petition for Peter Ellis, most of all the people who are still in the present government. I am also really disappointed that Peter Ellis is still waiting for justice. Who is going to get some justice for him?
So pleased for Teina Pora lets get the others sorted.
It is time the Justice Minister gave a bit or urgency to recompense as well.

Reply
Brendan Spratt
19/2/2018 11:22:12 pm

I don't disagree with Don Brash nor do I totally agree with him. There is a lot of background we never get to see in any case. All the cases that were mentioned had their nooks and crannies and of course no investigation is ever "mistake free" I put the test to Don Brash, if a member of his family was murdered and raped, would he want that person released, because the police were seen to be tarnishing i piece of evidence, yet there were 365 other pieces of evidence that pointed to his guilt. Of course we are all advocates for the innocent until it happens to our son or daughter. Fortunately we don't see detectives with that much commitment these days. What we do see is an "unhealthy culture that is completely ingrained into our Police Service. When I was a cop there were two types of police. The New Zealand Police and the Auckland Police. A corrupt culture has permeated the Auckland Police sine the early 1960's and when I joined in mid 1970's all my bosses had survived the 1960,s Evidence was planted on a wide scale. After the Royal Commission, they sort of were less obvious.The most common source of graft and the most lurative for senior detectives were illegal bookmakers. A victimless crime. Bookies were allowed to operate at a cost. Coming from a racing back ground, my father and his brother knew "bookies" and the Police they paid to operate. One former Commissioner was
once a Chief Detective and his weekly take was paid by a number of "big bookies" who supplied him with a list of bookies agents each month. These guys would just be answering the phone and the Police would raid them and they would be charged as " a bookmakers agent, which was a fine not imprisonment. Everyone happy, especially The Chief Detective whose"graft was 200 pound a week, this was in the 1960s, a fortune when you think a new house was 2,500 pound. These survivors of our most corrupt time in NZ Police, were now the men who rose through the ranks and became our hierachy and detectives who began their careers, in the 1970's are now at the end of their careers now. Now Police have no, victimless crimes, like bookmaking to "bite" so their corruption has somewhat had to change with the times. Information is the new bookmaking, massage parlours. and freebies for detectives on a Friday afternoon was the vogue for 10 years, then that was legalised, When cannabis is legalised you will see ex policman going into that I wonder why, just as ex cops went into Hotels.

The only thing that will change the culture of the police is Legislation.If you think the IPCA is clean think again.No folks the Police Hierachy have been hood winking politicians for 150 years and nothing will change.
Power and Control will always corrupt, Politicians, Police,Lawyers and Judges have one thing in common, Alcohol and wild women.
All these professions mistreat women, whether physically or mentally, because of their drug of choice called power.

Do we need an "Independant Body" yes we do. Is the IPCA the answer,no it is the problem. Does the Police need to be overhauled, hell yeah, before it is too late.

Most of our High Ranking Detectives couldn't track an elephant in snow. Ask them where the newest Illegal brothel is and they will tell you in a flash.

Our crime statistics have been manipulated by Police National Headquarters for 30 years that I can remember As Mike Bungay, once told me, "It's rather refreshing Spratty, to see a young guy like you except you are completely naieve, your bosses are a corrupt bunch of - - - - - and the one you speak of in Ch Ch always looks after me. . .. great drinking buddy but as bent as hell, in a nice kind of way.Very good detective, hard as nails and his mate in Auckland, no one would ever want to cross him.

Our policing policies are antiquated and ineffective.12,000 police and at night 10,000 are sleeping, when all the crime is taking place.

Policemen hate night shift, Mike Bush was a young cop once.


I used to love night shift, that was my most productive time as I used to "Work"

The problem is world wide. Police Culture change comes about by Legislation and having an Independant Body, not the IPCA, in its current form.

Reply
kelly clark
18/6/2015 08:14:02 am

Don Brash has always struck me as a good bloke who cares more for things that are bigger than just himself - a rare quality for a political mover and shaker. His words show humanity of the sort that is often missing from public debate on the Right. A great speech!

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Brian Johnston
25/7/2016 12:54:01 pm

Don Brash a good bloke huh?

It would be kind to call Brash naïve
His judgement is obviously flawed
May be incompetent

His speech made no mention of Scott Watson and many others

NZ Justice system completely broken

Judith Collins signed the partition. A joke?

The only people who can rebuild the justice system are the politicians.

Therein lies the problem and the reason why nothing changes

Hutton should have gone to gaol. The police closed ranks.

Thomas case should have tipped things upside down

The Scott Watson case is a travesty

Reply
writes essay for you link
16/1/2018 09:57:13 am

Flaws in the justice system should be addressed and it makes me feel proud that someone finally did. The problem with people working in the government is that no one is brave enough to address these kinds of issues. Everyone wants to be safe and so they always choose to be silent. This is not how things should be because everyone deserves the truth. Justice should be served when it is needed and should not be covered up with lies.

Colpepper
17/1/2017 07:43:41 pm

In an adversarial system such as we have, where the prosecution team make their living by vigorously attempting to incarcerate (or otherwise penalize) defendants and the defense team make their living by attempting to circumvent the prosecution's aims, it should be blatantly obvious to all that an additional TRULY INDEPENDENT, IMPARTIAL & UNBIASED body is required.

Has there ever been a single instance where a crown prosecutor had an 'attack of conscience' and refused to continue with a prosecution?

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