STORY: "Teina Pora Decision due Tuesday," published by the New Zealand Herald on Wednesday, February 25, 2015."
GIST: "Convicted rapist and murderer Teina Pora is due to learn on Tuesday night whether his appeal to the Privy Council in London is successful. Pora, who was freed on parole last April, spent 20 years in prison for the 1992 rape and murder of Aucklander Susan Burdett. His case has been reviewed by a Privy Council panel of five judges, including NZ Chief Justice Dame Sian Elias. Their decision will be delivered in the UK capital at 10pm (NZT). Pora has twice been convicted of Ms Burdett's rape and murder but his legal team have argued that evidence shows serial rapist Malcolm Rewa was responsible."
The entire story can be found at:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11407990
Wikipedia informs us that: Privy Council hearing 2014; On 31 January 2014 the Judicial Committee announced that Pora had been granted permission to take his case to the Privy Council in London later in 2014. The hearing was held in November. Pora's lawyer Jonathan Krebs told the Privy Council his client had recently been diagnosed with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder and had a mental age of nine or 10 at the time of the crime. He said this disability meant Pora was easily confused, had a drive to please others, and that his confession in 1993 should therefore be seen as unreliable.[31] Questions were also asked about the people named by Pora as having committed the murder. One of the Privy Council judges, Lord Toulson asked New Zealand's Solicitor-General "Why didn't Pora name [Malcolm] Rewa?" The explanation given by Pora's lawyers was that "Pora couldn't name Rewa because Pora didn't know him and because Pora wasn't there".[32] The Solicitor General, Michael Heron, disagreed saying that a number of people had testified to having seen Pora and Rewa together and argued that Pora had special knowledge about the crime indicating he was involved.[33]
The Privy Council is expected to deliver its decision in early 2015.[34] Concerns about conviction. In recent years two police officers have expressed concerns that Pora has been wrongly convicted. Detective Sergeant Dave Henwood, a criminal profiler, believes Rewa raped and murdered Mrs Burdett and acted alone based on his knowledge of Rewa's criminal signature. He also thinks the reason the juries failed to convict Rewa of the murder was that they could not reconcile this possibility with the knowledge that Pora had already been convicted for it.[4] In 2012 a second senior officer, who also worked on the case, wrote to Police Commissioner Peter Marshall expressing his concern that the wrong man had been convicted.[35] Susan's brother, Jim Burdett, also believes that Rewa was the one who raped and killed his sister. He believes Susan stood up for herself, that Rewa took the bat off her that she kept for self-defence and "struck the blows that killed her".[36]Malcolm Rewa's offending profile" When prosecuting Rewa, the police argued that Rewa and Pora committed the crime together. The difficulty with this view is that Rewa has a track record as a lone offender - a serial stalker and rapist who has been convicted of attacks on 24 other women. Rewa and Pora also came from rival gangs and were significantly different in age; Rewa was 40 and a senior member of Highway 61 while Pora was a 16-year-old Mongrel Mob associate.[37] Evidence put to the Privy Council also suggests that Rewa suffered from erectile dysfunction and would have been unlikely to have had an accomplice because of his embarrassment about this.[38]
Professor Laurence Alison, chair of forensic psychology at Liverpool University, concluded that it is "highly unlikely" Malcolm Rewa would have worked with any co-offender, let alone with Pora. He said: "These conclusions would have been much harder to arrive at at the time of Teina Pora's appeal since far less was known about behavioural profiling and specific co-offending patterns in rape.[39]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teina_Pora
PUBLISHER'S NOTE:
Dear Reader. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog. We are following this case.
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/
Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at:
http://smithforensic.blogspot.ca/2013/12/the-charles-smith-award-presented-to_28.html
I look forward to hearing from readers at:
hlevy15@gmail.com.
Harold Levy; Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog;
