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PREFACE: "In 1986, Alan Hall was convicted of killing Auckland father-of-three Arthur Easton. For the 35 years since the jury found him guilty, he has sought to prove his innocence. Now, a team including investigator Tim McKinnel has uncovered new evidence, and has applied to the Supreme Court to have Hall’s conviction reconsidered. Mike White investigates the latest development in one of New Zealand’s most controversial murders."
GIST: "It really was an absolute slam dunk of a case.
Arthur Easton had died after being stabbed in his Papakura home by a bayonet-wielding intruder, around 8pm on a Sunday evening in October 1985.
The bayonet, and a woollen hat the attacker was wearing, were left at the scene.
Alan Hall, a 23-year-old who lived a couple of kilometres away, was eventually found to have bought three of the uncommon Swedish Army bayonets, two years prior. And his brother owned a hat identical to the one discarded by the intruder, which Alan admitted borrowing. Only 40 of the hats had ever been made.
When police confronted Hall, he gave conflicting accounts of what had happened to the bayonet – it had been lost, or thrown out, or stolen – and did not have an alibi for the time of the murder. In fact, he said he’d been out walking in the vicinity of the Eastons’ house.
The coincidences seemed too great, the evidence too obvious, for the murderer to be anyone but Alan Hall.
And that’s what the jury decided when they convicted Hall in September 1986.
But Hall has always insisted he is innocent. So has his family. So have many others who’ve looked at his case over the past 35 years.
And now a new team, including investigator Tim McKinnel, who helped free Teina Pora, has found troubling evidence that strongly calls into question Hall’s conviction, and suggests the real killer has been at large ever since he bolted from the Eastons’ house that night, leaving Arthur Easton slowly bleeding to death in his hallway.
When the attacker quietly entered the Eastons’ Grove Rd house, he was initially confronted by one of Arthur’s sons, 16-year-old Brendan, who was swotting for a School Certificate exam the next day.
He charged the intruder, and yelled for help. Arthur, 52, and Brendan’s older brother, Kim, came to his assistance, and a confused and chaotic brawl ensued, with the mystery man being punched, kicked and having a squash racket smashed over his head.
But in the melee, Brendan, Kim and Arthur were all stabbed with the bayonet, the boys ending up in hospital, and Arthur dying within half an hour.
Initial statements made by Brendan that night, to a 111 responder, and an ambulance officer, described the attacker as about 6’ tall (1.83m), Māori, and powerfully built.
By the next day, Brendan and Kim weren’t sure of the attacker’s ethnicity.
However, police continued to look for a young Māori male, based on a crucial eyewitness, Ronald Turner, who saw a man running near the scene at the time of the attack, constantly looking over his shoulder.
Turner, who was driving to a cash machine, commented to his wife that the person looked suspicious. In several statements to police, he remained adamant the person he saw coming from the direction of the crime was Māori.
Several other people gave police a similar description of someone they saw running in the area at the time.
However, the focus on a tall, strongly-built, young Māori male suddenly changed when police discovered Alan Hall had a bayonet and hat like the ones found at the murder scene.
Now, it seemed, the offender was a 5’ 7” (1.7m) Pākehā. A slightly-built asthmatic who had somehow fought off Arthur Easton and his two teenage sons in a prolonged struggle, without any sign of injury, or any abnormal behaviour afterwards, according to his family and employer.
Of course, this was inconvenient and difficult for police to explain – particularly with eyewitnesses at the scene and immediately afterwards insisting the attacker was tall and Māori.
So, they did what they could to obscure this.
The early statements of Brendan and Kim Easton were simply not handed over to Hall’s lawyers. Nor was the statement of the ambulance officer who insisted Brendan referred to the attacker as “black”.
And when the jury was read the statement from Ronald Turner, who’d seen someone suspicious running near the Eastons’ house, any reference to the person being Māori or “dark-skinned” had been removed – without Turner being aware of this. His earlier statements were simply not disclosed to Hall or his lawyers.
Hall’s current lawyer, Nick Chisnall, is forthright about what happened, in his submission to the Supreme Court for Hall’s case to be reheard, which was filed on Tuesday.
“It is indisputable that Mr Turner’s statement was intentionally altered ... after Mr Turner made it clear he did not resile from his statement that the man he saw was Māori. “Mr Turner’s evidence was tampered with to ensure it conformed with the Crown’s theory of the case, that Mr Hall was the murderer. “This was grave misconduct.”
This wasn’t the only crucial information withheld by police, that would have helped Alan Hall argue his innocence.
Material regarding the police’s early prime suspect, who fitted eyewitness descriptions but was abandoned when detectives became aware of Hall, wasn’t handed over.
Over the years since Hall’s conviction, numerous lawyers, justice groups and journalists have examined the case and raised significant concerns.
However, not only did Hall lose his appeal in 1987, but he has had three applications for the Royal Prerogative of Mercy (the final form of appeal, made to the governor-general, which was replaced by the Criminal Cases Review Commission in 2020) rejected by officials.
Hall served nine years in jail for the murder before being paroled. However, he breached his parole conditions, and was recalled to prison, and has remained there for the last 10 years. He will turn 60 at the end of January.
As Alan Hall’s brother Geoff says, the slow progress in the case has not been for want of trying on their part.
Four generations of Alan’s family – his grandfather, mother, brothers, and nephew and niece, have worked on the case. There has been a string of lawyers, and mounting bills for fighting the conviction. The family home in Papakura had to be sold to pay legal costs.
Each legal application has required huge effort and research, and Geoff Hall admitted the rejections had worn the family down. “It’s like the wall in front of us to climb was getting bigger, rather than smaller. But we keep on fighting, because we’re doing the right thing.”
Geoff Hall says he has, of course, considered the fact his brother might be guilty. “You can’t not run that through your mind. If I had any doubts, and thought Alan was involved in any way, we wouldn’t be doing this. No, I’d tell him, ‘I love you, brother, but you’ve done something, so you need to take care of that and deal with it.’ “But because you know Alan a lot more, and what he’s capable of, and what he isn’t capable of, there’s absolutely no way he did it.”
Investigator Tim McKinnel agrees.
“My view is that Alan is innocent, having reviewed all the evidence, and I think there’s a real miscarriage of justice that’s occurred in this case.”
The former detective, who was instrumental in proving Teina Pora was innocent of murdering Susan Burdett, was approached four years ago to look at the case, by former Newshub journalist Mike Wesley-Smith, who made a powerful podcast about Hall’s case, Grove Road.
By the time McKinnel met with Hall’s family, he already knew there were troubling aspects with the case, and says it was a “relatively easy decision” when asked to help prepare a new appeal.
Since then, McKinnel has gone through the police file, tracked down witnesses, and reviewed what occurred in the 1980s when Hall was convicted.
An expert has now diagnosed Hall, who has previously been described as “intellectually slow” or “simple”, with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Another expert says this can explain Hall’s conflicting statements to police, while he was detained for eight hours on one occasion, and 15 on another.
And new forensic expert evidence strongly challenges the claim made during Hall’s trial, that the stab wounds the victims suffered were “consistent with” the attacker being left-handed. (Hall is left-handed.)
McKinnel says it would be rare for a case this old to be reheard by the Supreme Court, and he expects the bar to be high as to whether the court will accept the appeal. (Appealing to the Supreme Court is a two-stage process: first you must apply for leave for the appeal to be heard; then, if that is granted, an actual hearing is held, and the conviction may be quashed, or upheld.)
For this reason, Hall’s team has taken several years to prepare the appeal.
McKinnel says as well as many unanswered questions about other potential suspects in the case, ESR still holds numerous exhibits from the crime that could be retested using more modern or different techniques, and they were exploring the possibility of doing this, with police.
Geoff Hall says he could never have imagined that 35 years of his life would be spent trying to prove his brother did not murder Arthur Easton. “I was sitting here at my desk, reading through the [Supreme Court] application, and it brings a lot back. “I just wanted [McKinnel and Chisnall] to have a real good look at the case, because when you break it right down, there’s just so many points that are so wrong.”
The continued reluctance of the police and courts and officials to accept the wrong person had been convicted, shocked him. “I was brought up to believe we’ve got a really good system that sorts these things out early on. But it’s not. It’s status quo, cover your arse, basically. “It just feels like a never-ending battle.”
And there are further legal hurdles to overcome before Alan Hall’s case can be reconsidered.
Because it is so long since the trial and original appeal, Crown Law has to agree to the application being heard by the Supreme Court. (Crown Law was unable to comment on whether it would agree or not, at this stage. Police also declined to comment on the case.)
If the Crown doesn’t agree to Hall’s Supreme Court appeal, then the only option left for the family is the expensive and lengthy process of appealing to the Privy Council, an option available to Hall because his trial was before the Supreme Court was established in New Zealand, in 2004.
Despite all this, Geoff Hall remains confident the court will see his brother has been wrongfully convicted. “It’s 80 per cent hopes up, 20 per cent prepare yourself.”
He realises any hearing will resurrect trauma and grief for the victim’s family, and feels deeply for them. “But I’m looking at the bigger picture – if we get this right, then the absolute truth for their family will come out.”
His own faith in the police has been completely eroded by the protracted and painful process, with nobody wanting to admit mistakes or accept Alan might have been the victim of a miscarriage of justice.
Some time ago, someone challenged Geoff about this, and asked who he would call if he had a home invasion.
He said he’d call the fire brigade: They’d be there in minutes, and there would be a bunch of burly firefighters with protective gear and axes to confront the intruder.
Geoff Hall says his brother is buoyed by the prospect of an appeal.
“Alan is keen to get out. He’s had enough of doing somebody else’s time. He just wants to get out and live. “He was well on the way with his life at 19, 20, 21, 22 – and then all this happened, and it was all taken away from him. “I’d have loved to have known what his life would have been, where he was going to go with it. But it’s been robbed from him. “When you go and see him in jail he’s just sitting in this concrete box, with a lot of people he shouldn’t be with. “But we’ve never given up. We never will. Never ever will. “It’s the right thing to do – not only for Alan, but for New Zealand justice, and for everybody, really.""
The entire story can be read at:
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. 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;
