"Justice is slow-moving in New Zealand
but must it be as slow as this? Teina Pora spent 22 years in custody on
rape and murder charges until his convictions were finally quashed by
the Privy Council in March. He has since learned there will be no
retrial. It was a magnificent result for those who campaigned so
long on Pora's behalf, but how much time was lost? Labour's justice
spokeswoman Jacinda Ardern says that she heard from someone in Pora's
camp that if New Zealand had an equivalent body to England and
Scotland's Criminal Cases Review Commissions, Pora might have spent five
fewer years in prison. Would a criminal cases review panel help speed up
long-running and expensive miscarriages of justice? The Pora case reignited calls for a government-funded body to
investigate miscarriages of justice. These calls are not new but each
subsequent case makes them louder. There was David Bain. There was David
Dougherty and Peter Ellis. There was Mark Lundy and Teina Pora. There
is Scott Watson and Michael October. A decade ago, a retired High
Court judge, Sir Thomas Thorp, argued that New Zealand needs a body
similar to the UK's Criminal Cases Review Commission, created in the
wake of such high-profile injustices as the case of the Birmingham Six
and the Guildford Four. Working off British examples, Thorp estimated
that there are likely to be 20 innocent people in New Zealand jails at
any one time.........Ardern says
that the imminent launch of the New Zealand Public Interest Project
(NZPIP) is therefore welcome news. It is a group of lawyers and
academics with connections to the University of Canterbury and its
trustees are almost a roll call of names of those who have campaigned on
behalf of others. Nigel Hampton QC is active in the campaign to
clear Michael October; Hampton believes October falsely confessed to
taking part in a rape and murder in Christchurch in 1994. Lawyer Kerry
Cook is acting for convicted double murderer Scott Watson. Tim McKinnel
worked on the Pora case. Jarrod Gilbert and Chris Gallavin are a
sociologist and law lecturer and Canterbury's dean of law respectively.
Glynn Rigby is a private investigator. Anna Sandiford is a forensic
science consultant who gave evidence in the Bain retrial. Duncan Webb is
a Christchurch insurance lawyer whose involvement shows that the NZPIP
will consider civic cases as well as criminal ones. The group says
on its website that a Criminal Cases Review Commission-like body is "an
important absence in our country's legal system". So they set about
creating their own. The Michael October and Scott Watson cases
will be among the first considered by the NZPIP after it officially
launches next month. The team will be helped by Canterbury
University law students, both as volunteers and working for course
credit. They will take cases that are in the public good, whether that
means appealing miscarriages of justice against individuals, or civil
matters where "access to justice is inhibited" or where a public
interest is not otherwise served. They could be test cases or class
actions, human rights cases or commercial and consumer matters."