Teina Pora: This cannot happen again

Wednesday, 15 June 2016

How did Teina Pora, a 17-year-old with the mind of a 9-year-old, end up in prison for a crime he never committed?

OPINION: The compensation offer made to Teina Pora at least begins to right the incomprehensible wrong done to him 23 years ago.

But Wednesday's announcement doesn't even start to address the myriad faults his case exposes in our justice system.

A Commission of Inquiry - and a new way of dealing with flawed convictions - is the only way it can.

Teina Pora's legal team have said they will not be pushed into accepting the Government's compensation offer immediately.

Without an inquiry, the wilful blindness which contributed to this miscarriage of justice will inevitably lead to another innocent person being locked up.

**READ MORE:

Teina Pora at the time of his arrest in 1993 when he was accused of murdering Susan Burdett.

* As it happened: Govt announces $2.5m for Pora

* Government says sorry for 'devastating impact'

* Teina Pora: True cost of injustice

* Pora's life since prison 'overwhelming'

* Society owes it to Teina Pora to confront a broken justice system and to fix it

Pora spent 21 years in prison after he was wrongly accused of rape and murder.

* Independent review for Teina Pora's compensation claim**

And without a new system, such as the Criminal Cases Review Commission they have in the UK, those wrongs will remain unseen.

The officer in charge of the Susan Burdett murder case, former Inspector Steve Rutherford, is pictured inside the front door and lounge of Burdett's home, on May 22, 1992. The following March Teina Pora was charged with her murder.

Pora was robbed of 21 years of freedom, twice wrongly convicted of the rape and murder of Susan Burdett.

Finally, the system has yielded: retired High Court Judge Rodney Hansen QC has demolished the Crown case in a report which contains many veiled yet withering barbs about the investigation and prosecution of a young man who was suffering from Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD).

The Super Strike 10 pin bowling alley where Susan Burdett spent her last evening before returning home, where she was murdered.

Yet there are crucial conclusions in the report which shouldn't surprise those who have pursued him all these years, much as they would prefer to deny them. And that's particularly the case for the three most important planks of the case:

THE CONFESSIONS:

Rutherford is pictured inside the bedroom of Burdett's home. The bed where the murder took place had been removed.

The dominant feature of the 1994 and 2000 trials were statements Pora made during video-taped interviews with police in March 1993.

The report describes them as the 'transparent concoction' of a young man 'befuddled by FASD'. 'Time and again he showed he had no idea of what had happened,' writes Hansen.

Serial rapist Malcolm Rewa was convicted of a sex attack on Susan Burdett but not of killing her.

'His account is so plainly a fabrication that it collapses under its own weight.'

You could argue Hansen has the benefit of hindsight. Except, it's not just that. And it's not just him.

When you watch the police video of Teina standing in front of Susan Burdett's house so obviously unable to identify it until a detective inspector points out the scene of the crime, it defies belief to think that anyone could accept he knew what he was talking about.

And it's not just us who think that.

At the end of the first day of interviews, an experienced detective who was observing, tasked with the role of spotting things which could be followed up on, was so alarmed by what Teina was saying he went to his bosses and told them there were too many inconsistencies. He didn't believe Teina was telling the truth - he even wrote a report saying so.

That detective was ignored.

THE FAMILY:

The star witnesses against Teina were his own family - in particular an aunt who was paid $5000 by the police after giving evidence at the first trial, and her daughter who became somewhat of a super-witness at the second trial, recalling events from years ago that had not been mentioned earlier.

Their evidence (and that of several others, including a jailhouse witness and another witness who was paid by the police) were used by the Crown to independently corroborate aspects of Teina's confession and an alleged connection with the Malcolm Rewa, the serial rapist whose DNA was found at the scene.

Hansen not only dismisses the family members' evidence, casting doubt on its reliability and accuracy - he also questions how it came about.

'[T]he role of Mr Pora's extended family generally, and [the cousin and aunt] in particular, is one of the more disquieting features of a worrying series of events,' he writes. 'Anything that might shed light on their involvement would foster a better understanding of why they occurred and how.'

Again, this should come as no surprise to the police. That same aunt and other family members had come forward to the police even before Pora's arrest. They were determined to dob him in as part of a campaign to get Pora locked up and out of their lives.

In fact, a senior policeman, then-Detective Sergeant Karl Wright St Clair, concluded in 1992: 'I suggest that no further action be taken in relation to Teina Pora as a suspect or investigating further the false information and conspiracy…There has already been enough police resources wasted in relation to this matter.'

Unfortunately, time would prove that far, far more police resources would be wasted wrongly treating Teina Pora as a suspect.

MALCOLM REWA:

Even before Pora went to trial in 1994, the police had concluded, on the basis of modus operandi, that whoever attacked Susan Burdett was responsible for a series of unsolved rapes. And they knew from DNA evidence that that person wasn't Teina Pora (though the police case was that he was a co-offender).

By 1996, they had used DNA to identify that person: Malcolm Rewa, who was responsible for at least 24 other sex attacks. On each of those occasions, he acted alone. And still the police believed Pora was involved in the Burdett rape and murder.

Again, it defied belief.

Hansen, upon reviewing all the evidence, sums up what he thinks happened: 'I find the undisputed evidence leads to the irresistible inference that Malcolm Rewa acted alone and was solely responsible for the rape and murder of Ms Burdett.' (Rewa was convicted of Susan's rape but has never been convicted of her murder.)

Once again, Hansen's conclusion will not come as a shock to the system. Even within police ranks, officers have for years maintained Rewa was a lone wolf predator.

Most prominently, Detective Sergeant Dave Henwood, a criminal profiler whose work was so respected he was called as an expert witness against Rewa, has maintained since 1996 that Rewa acted alone. Pora, he said, was an innocent man.

Now, finally, the system agrees. But when so many alarm bells were ignored along the way, what's to stop such a grievous miscarriage of justice happening again?

Hansen concludes that there were faults with the way the police conducted the investigation, though he says they should not bear responsibility.

'The police investigation is one element only of the factual matrix in which Mr Pora was found guilty of crimes he did not commit,' writes Hansen. 'His confession was another. The conduct of the prosecution and Mr Pora's defence were others. An analysis of why the normal safeguards failed on this occasion would be far-reaching and quite beyond the scope of this report.'

That these questions were outside of Hansen's scope only underlines that there needs to be an inquiry.

And it's also time for a new way of dealing with wrongful convictions.

This cannot happen again.