Sunday, January 6, 2013

David Bain: "A pity foreign experts aren't as clever as us," by Rodney Hide. New Zealand Herald. (Great Read. HL).


COMMENTARY:  "A pity foreign experts aren't as clever as us," by Rodney Hide, published in the New Zealand Herald on January 6, 2013. (Rodney Hide is  a New Zealand politician who was leader of the political party ACT New Zealand from 2004 to 2011). Extensive background on Mr. Hide at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodney_Hide

GIST: "Police Commissioner Peter Marshall refuses to accept Justice Binnie's findings that the police investigation of the Bain murders contained "egregious errors" or any "failure to investigate the possibility of innocence". It's true that Detective Senior Sergeant James Doyle agreed that police efforts to investigate the timings of David Bain's alibi were "amateurish"; that the officer in charge of the crime scene, Detective Sergeant Weir, described the police photographs of the scene as a "shambles"; that police authorised the house where the crime took place to be burned down without all the relevant evidence collected. It's true that the Privy Council found important elements of the police testimony misleading and there had been a "substantial miscarriage of justice"; that the effort to clarify the DNA of the blood with David Bain's fingerprint on the rifle was described by an Australian forensic expert as an "unspeakable mess"; that police destroyed evidence five days before David Bain lodged his appeal. The Police Commissioner accepts there were errors but declares them not "egregious". The problem, he explains, is the extraordinary scrutiny. Fortunately for the police, their work usually doesn't receive such scrutiny..........But we have learned the lesson: Justice Minister Judith Collins has brought in Hon Robert Fisher, QC, to sort through the Bain case. As luck would have it, he is one of the two lawyers who stuck up for the police and walked out on the Royal Commission 32 years ago. The thinking behind this is straightforward. Overseas experts come up short every time they review our justice system. Far better we get one of our own to do it. After all, we are now developing our own justice system. And we have a Minister quite capable of dispensing it."

The entire commentary can be found at:

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10857464

PUBLISHER'S NOTE

I have added a search box for content in this blog which now encompasses several thousand posts. The search box is located  near the bottom of the screen just above the list of links. I am confident that this powerful search tool provided by "Blogger" will help our readers and myself get more out of the site.

The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at:

http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith

Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at:

http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html

Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com

Harold Levy: Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog.  

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