'It should never have happened': How everyone turned a blind eye to Alan Hall's wrongful conviction

Friday, 17 June 2022

Alan Hall, who was convicted of murdering Arthur Easton, spent 19 years in jail for the crime. His conviction was quashed by the Supreme Court. Stuff followed Alan and his family during the process. (First published in June 2022)

This story is featured on Stuff’s The Long Read podcast. Check it out by hitting the play button below, or find it on podcast apps like Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts

Alan Hall spent 19 years in jail for a murder he didn't commit but the authorities repeatedly refused to acknowledge a terrible mistake had been made. With the Supreme Court now quashing Hall’s conviction, calls are growing for those responsible to be held accountable. Mike White and Lawrence Smith followed Hall on his journey to justice.

The day before Alan Hall appeared in the Supreme Court to appeal his murder conviction, he visited Parliament.

Hall, 60, had never been to Wellington before – never travelled further south than New Plymouth in his life.

He hadn’t even been on a plane since 1985.

That was the year police claimed he killed Auckland father of five, Arthur Easton, with detectives later doctoring evidence to convict him.

* Arthur Easton's family react to quashing of Alan Hall murder conviction

* Supreme Court quashes murder conviction of wrongfully jailed man

* Man who spent 19 years in jail for murder was wrongfully convicted, Crown admits

Alan Hall was 23 when he became the prime suspect in the police investigation into the murder of Arthur Easton in 1985.

They grilled Hall, who had an intellectual disability, for 23 hours without a lawyer.

They hid crucial evidence from the jury.

They carried out dubious experiments and even hypnotised witnesses.

Alan Hall, now 60, fought to prove his innocence for 37 years, but was stymied by police, lawyers, bureaucrats and politicians.

And then they celebrated when Hall was convicted and sent to prison for life.

From the time of his arrest, Hall fought to prove his innocence.

But nobody in authority wanted to know, keener to wash their hands of Hall than admit a catastrophic error had occurred; more intent on closing the door on him than ensuring justice was done.

And so here Hall was, padding up Parliament’s steps in crisp white shoes at dusk on a June evening, the gold of his sweatshirt clashing cheerily with the building’s drab grey stone.

Arthur Easton, who was murdered in his home in Papakura in October 1985. The 52-year-old father-of-five was a chief technician with the New Zealand Post Office and responsible for hundreds of staff and all telecommunications infrastructure in South Auckland.

He stood there a moment, imagining the rule-makers and powers-that-be and bureaucrats inside who had ignored his case for decades, none of them lifting a finger to help him.

“No,” Hall spat. “They let me rot in prison.”

The murder came out of the blue.

Items from Alan Hall’s file, including the hat the offender wore during the attack.

Arthur Easton, 52, a senior telecommunications manager, was at his Grove Rd home in Papakura around 8pm on a Sunday evening in October 1985.

One of his sons, Brendan, heard a noise and came out of his bedroom to find a stranger in the hallway.

A long struggle ensued between the intruder and Brendan, his older brother Kim, and Arthur.

During the fight, all three were stabbed with a bayonet, with Arthur dying from his injuries shortly afterwards.

Alan Hall sits in a Wellington cafe, the night before his Supreme Court hearing.

The attacker escaped out the back door, squeezed through a hedge into an adjacent alleyway, and fled, leaving behind the bayonet and a woollen hat.

Brendan and Kim initially described the man as a 6ft (1.83m), powerfully built, right-handed Māori.

And a crucial eyewitness who saw someone running from the direction of the crime, Ronald Turner, insisted the man he saw was definitely Māori.

However, two months later, police learnt that 23-year-old Alan Hall, who lived nearby, had owned a bayonet like the one left at the murder scene, borrowed a hat identical to the one the intruder wore, and was walking near the Eastons’ home around the time of the murder.

Hall, who at the time was described as “intellectually backward” and “slow” (and has since been diagnosed as autistic), gave varying answers about what had happened to his bayonet, including that it had been stolen, which led to police accusing him of lying.

And the evidence pointing to Hall seemed substantial.

But the problem was that all eyewitnesses described the offender as someone completely different from Hall, who was a 5ft7 (1.70m), slightly built, asthmatic, left-handed Pākehā.

So police hypnotised Brendan and Kim Easton to see if they could recall further details.

Then they recreated the attack in the Eastons’ hallway, and afterwards, Brendan and Kim changed their earlier statements and said the intruder could have been left-handed. They also became unsure about the attacker’s ethnicity, despite having been clear about it straight after the murder.

Police also staged a wholly unscientific experiment to test whether Ronald Turner could have identified the fleeing man as Māori, and unilaterally judged his description wasn’t reliable.

Nick Chisnall says he quickly formed a strong view Alan Hall was innocent, and has called for those responsible for Hall’s wrongful conviction to be prosecuted.

So they hid Turner’s first two statements from Alan Hall’s lawyers, and changed his final statement that was read to the jury, without Turner’s knowledge, to remove any reference to the offender being Māori or dark-skinned.

They also concealed the earliest statements from the Easton boys about the offender being Māori, and the evidence of an ambulance driver who they repeated this description to.

So at Alan Hall’s trial, in 1986, the jury had little reason to think the offender couldn’t have been him, and found him guilty - despite Hall having no violent history; being so weedy (62kg) he had little likelihood of holding off three men in a prolonged struggle; and showing no sign of injury (the offender was punched numerous times and smashed over the head with a wooden squash racket).

He was sentenced to life in prison, and transferred to the maximum security wing of New Zealand’s hardest prison, Pāremoremo.

The night before Hall’s Supreme Court hearing, his lawyer, Nick Chisnall, slept restlessly.

He had appeared in the country’s top court many times.

He knew the evidence of Hall’s wrongful conviction was overwhelming.

He had a new suit, bought for the occasion, hanging in the wardrobe of his hotel room.

Investigator Tim McKinnel says what happened to Alan Hall is unforgivable, and he has called on police to find Arthur Easton’s real killer.

But still, he couldn’t shake the nerves.

He woke at 1am, then at 3am, then at 5am, staring at the ceiling, mind circling at speed.

At 5.30am, he gave up, got up, and started going over his notes again.

Chisnall had been approached to look at the case four years ago, and quickly realised not only had Hall’s trial been riddled with flaws and failings, but that Hall was innocent.

The deliberate altering of Ronald Turner’s statement to obscure the offender’s description was “deceit, plain and simple,” says Chisnall. “And yes, I think corruption is probably a term that aptly fits what’s happened.

“The case is riddled with myopia. And the only conclusion that can be reached is that the non-disclosures, and changing of evidence, and reconstructions, were all attempts by the police to make the evidence match their theory, which was that Alan was the offender.”

Tim McKinnel, left, and Alan Hall’s lawyers Nick Chisnall, centre, and Luke Elborough, make their way to the Supreme Court for Hall’s appeal.

Chisnall says Hall’s case is undoubtedly one of New Zealand’s worst miscarriages of justice.

“It’s up there with Teina Pora, it’s up there with Arthur Allan Thomas.

“And the fact it’s taken 30 years to get to this point, is an indictment on our criminal justice system. It demonstrates how hard a palpably innocent person has to work to overturn a conviction.”

Until January, when Chisnall filed Hall’s Supreme Court appeal, the justice system had repeatedly turned a blind eye to Hall’s situation, despite extensive proof of what had gone wrong with his case, sitting in officials’ files for decades, Chisnall says.

“I’ve had a consistent feeling of anger about this case. And frustration.

“And none of what’s happened recently can give Alan back the nearly two decades he was in prison.”

Investigator Tim McKinnel, who worked on Hall’s case for four years with his colleague Katya Paquin, shares Chisnall’s exasperation at the extraordinary length of time it took authorities to review Hall’s conviction.

“What’s gone on is unforgivable. Doing the right thing 36 years later doesn't fix all the wrongdoing.

“There has been a culture of thumbing your nose at those who claim they’re wrongfully convicted, scoffing at it, and saying, ‘it hardly ever happens, not in this country, we’re better than that’.

“We’re not – we never have been. And I think we’ve been kidding ourselves.

Alan Hall, right, and brother Geoff in their hotel room before going to the Supreme Court.

“One of the things I hear in cases like this is, it’s the ‘bad apple’ argument; it’s the ‘once in a blue moon’ argument; it’s the ‘it wouldn’t happen now’ argument.

“Says who?

“I think we need to ask some pretty serious questions about not just how the police have failed – as they have – but how the Crown failed, how Crown Law failed, how the judiciary failed – because they did – and how the whole system was able to let down not only somebody as vulnerable as Alan Hall, but the Easton family.”

Scars on Alan Hall’s ankle from his electronic monitoring bracelet, which he had to wear after leaving prison in March.

McKinnel, who also helped free Teina Pora after he was wrongfully convicted of murder and rape, says if they hadn’t taken his case to the Supreme Court, Hall would probably still be in jail.

“And there are other people in prison – you know them, I know them – who in all likelihood, didn’t do the things they were convicted of.

“And they’ve been there for decades and will be there for decades more, because they won’t admit guilt.”

Police have launched two inquiries into Hall’s case.

One will review the original investigation and what avenues of reinvestigation remain.

Alan Hall with one of his nephews, Kaltyn Hall, at Parliament the evening before his Supreme Court hearing. Nearly 20 family members and supporters, including Alan Hall’s four brothers and sister, travelled to Wellington to be with him at the hearing.

A separate investigation by Acting Detective Superintendent Graham Pitkethley will look into the circumstances around disclosure of evidence, which was at the heart of Hall’s appeal.

McKinnel, an ex-detective, is urging police to be up front.

“There’s a series of things they need to do.

“They need to catch Arthur Easton’s killer.

“They need to look at whether their own have committed crimes in getting Alan convicted.

“And then they need to think about how they allowed their own inquiry to go off the rails so terribly.”

In the hours before the Supreme Court’s five judges returned with their judgment, Alan Hall paced the court’s foyer wearing his beanie, chatted with court staff, and sat outside while his brother Geoff vaped.

Hall and his family had to pay all their airfares and accommodation to be at the court for his appeal, the system denying responsibility or compassion to the last.

And then a final indignity: Probation telling Hall the ankle bracelet he had been forced to wear since his release from prison in early March, would need to go back on as soon as he returned to Auckland that evening, insisting they needed paperwork from the courts before they could accept he was a free man.

It seemed nobody wanted to be the first to allow the callouses on his ankle where the bracelet had cut in, let alone the effects of his 36 years as a convicted murderer, to begin healing.

Sharing the wait with Hall and his family, was former journalist Mike Wesley-Smith whose 2018 podcast, Grove Road, was crucial in rekindling concern about Hall’s case.

Five years ago, Geoff Hall had rolled up his garage door to reveal the archive of the case, countless boxes containing records of the family’s ceaseless fight to clear Alan’s name.

Alan Hall with brothers Greg, left, and Geoff.

What Wesley-Smith discovered in those boxes was evidence that showed Alan Hall was unlikely to have been the killer – and evidence the authorities had known about this for 30 years, but thrown it back in Hall’s face.

And when Wesley-Smith revealed more evidence about police and prosecution malpractice, Crown Law, which oversees criminal prosecutions in New Zealand, continued to rebuff him, claiming it had no role or responsibility in the case.

Investigator Tim McKinnel waits for the Supreme Court’s judgment. Much of McKinnel’s work on the case was done pro bono. “It’s not a great commercial model in terms of making a living, let me tell you.”

The Ministry of Justice, which had rejected three applications for appeal by Hall, employed the Latin term functus officio (having discharged their duty) to wash their hands of the case, when Wesley-Smith asked them to act.

Throughout all of this, Alan Hall remained in prison.

As Wesley-Smith puts it, “there was just a complete absence of concern.

“And to be here four years later, I feel really disappointed, because I thought any recipient of that information should have been motivated to do what was the obvious right thing – to initiate an inquiry.

“It was just an unspeakable failure.”

Wesley-Smith was the latest in a list of people stretching back decades, who had been shocked by official indifference to the fact the prosecution had intentionally manipulated and hidden evidence in order to convict Hall.

Crown Law counsel Emma Hoskin, left, and Madeleine Laracy. The lawyers have received widespread plaudits for accepting Alan Hall was the victim of a miscarriage of justice, and urging the Supreme Court to quash his conviction.

Lawyer Bruce Stainton assisted the late Peter Williams at Hall’s 1987 appeal, and presented an application for the Royal prerogative of mercy five years later.

He says he was left “shattered and disbelieving” when authorities ignored proof of evidence being doctored and concealed, and felt there was “a determination to maintain the status quo”.

Stainton says Peter Williams was equally devastated by what happened to Hall, and blamed himself for trusting the prosecution had been honest with him.

“In emotional terms, it rocked him each step of the way.”

Alan Hall’s legal team, Luke Elborough, left, and Nick Chisnall, have paid tribute to how the Crown eventually dealt with Hall’s case.

Documentary maker Bryan Bruce examined Hall’s case in 2009 as part of his series investigating unsolved or controversial cases.

“And of all the cases I did, this was the one where I went, ‘This person is absolutely innocent – I cannot understand how this person was convicted.’

“Alan is intellectually challenged, so he was an easy target, and they bricked him in (sought evidence to convict him).”

The engineering of a false statement to go before the jury, and dubious experiments to change witness evidence, were the most blatant example of official tampering Bruce had ever seen.

“I just thought it was diabolical.”

The question of who was responsible for the egregious errors and deliberate actions that resulted in Hall’s wrongful conviction, remains unanswered, and Bruce is one of many calling for a full investigation.

The officer in charge of the Arthur Easton murder inquiry, former Detective Senior Sergeant Kelvin McMinn, told Wesley-Smith in 2018 that the alterations to Ronald Turner’s statement were made on the advice of the Crown prosecutor, because it was felt Turner’s descriptions were unreliable.

“All decisions around what briefs of evidence were read to a jury and the form they took were decisions for the Crown prosecutor.”

Alan Hall spent 19 years in prison. Now his conviction has been quashed, he is expected to seek compensation from the government.

McMinn’s second-in-charge during the investigation, Tony Smith, also stated that evidence was altered after discussions with the Crown solicitor.

McMinn said the reconstructions and experiments conducted by police, and the hypnosis of Brendan and Kim Easton, were carried out by his supervisor, Detective Chief Inspector Bryan Rowe.

Rowe died in 2011.

Former Crown solicitor Peter Kaye, who prosecuted Hall at his trial, declined to comment while an investigation into the Crown’s role was underway.

However, Kaye told Wesley-Smith in 2018 he disagreed with McMinn’s recollection that he was responsible for evidence being changed.

“At no stage in my career have I ordered a statement to be altered by deleting material aspects of it.

“That is not something I would have done.”

In the minutes before Chief Justice Dame Helen Winkelmann announced the justice system had failed Alan Hall, and his murder conviction would be quashed, Hall sat in the centre of the Supreme Court’s public gallery, surrounded by his family, and 37 years of recriminations.

In an extraordinary move, Crown Law’s Madeleine Laracy and Emma Hoskin had conceded Hall had suffered a serious miscarriage of justice and should be acquitted.

With grace and courage previously missing from Crown Law’s actions, Laracy and Hoskin introduced themselves to Hall before the hearing, indicating that once they learnt what had happened to him, there was no question they had to right it.

And after Winkelmann had delivered the court’s judgment, and the judges had filed out, and the registrar had adjourned the court, and those remaining had burst into applause, Hall embraced Laracy and Hoskin as warmly as everyone else, in a swirl of hugs, and thanks, and back-slapping.

“I was going to stand up and say, ‘you little beauty’,” Hall joked about the court’s decision, his eyes glinting above the line of his facemask.

Nick Chisnall looked exhausted, hanging over the court’s barrier like a boxer draped over the ropes.

“It’s exceptional. I had a tear in my eye. One of the most emotional moments I’ve had in court.”

Outside, Geoff Hall addressed the media, saying what had just occurred was a victory for Alan, his family, and all New Zealanders.

“We fought against injustice, and we won, today. Our story is told.”

Alan Hall’s summation was simple: “It should never have happened.”

A bitter evening breeze swept down Lambton Quay.

Across the road, through first-floor windows, people paced on treadmills at a gym.

Commuters sheltered in a nearby bus stop, cyclists bent into the wind, and buses angled through gaps in the traffic.

Around the corner, Hall bundled himself into a taxi, unsettled by the cameras, keen to get to the airport, impatient to put the last 37 years behind him, as best he could.

*Watch the story of Alan Hall’s journey to justice at stuff.co.nz