Teina Pora: The cast of characters involved in the case against him
Thursday, 16 June 2016
It took just one man - retired High Court judge Rodney Hansen, QC - to finally deem Teina Pora an innocent man.
But over the past 23 years, there has been a dizzying array of characters who have had an influence on this case, arguably New Zealand's worst miscarriage of justice.
From the police who interviewed him in 1993 and decided to charge him with the rape and murder of Susan Burdett, to the Hawke's Bay team of two lawyers and a private investigator who fought for his freedom over the past seven years.
Along the way there have been surprising parts played by some characters: family members who gave evidence against him; police who spoke up for him.
In his report, Hansen chooses his words carefully to avoid directly pointing the blame.
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But when such a terrible wrong has been done to someone so vulnerable - don't forget that Pora was a 17-year-old suffering from Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder - surely there should be some accountability?
The answer to that question is likely to be as complex and complicated as all the twists and turns this case has taken since 1992.
As Hansen found it's impossible to apportion blame, but it's instructive to consider the roles various people played.
On the police videos recording Pora's statements, the first policeman you see is Detective Sergeant Mark Williams. He was a seasoned south Auckland policeman at the time - it's still his beat all these years later.
Pora had been brought in to the Otahuhu police station for questioning about car thefts. At some point, the officer who had arrested him that morning introduced him to Williams. He wanted to see if Pora would become an informant, but during the conversation, according to court documents, Pora brought up the question of the Burdett homicide.
Williams had been looking at aspects of the case, investigating if it was linked to a series of unsolved rapes. In fact he would soon start ordering DNA testing to see if he could confirm that.
But as Pora sat in the police cell that morning, the police had no one. There was a $20,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and Pora asked about it.
Williams began questioning him. No lawyer was ever present during the interviews, although the police did ask Pora several times if he wanted one.
Should Williams have stopped the interview when Pora started saying things that weren't true? Over the years, we've approached Williams and asked him for an interview. He's always declined.
In any event, Williams soon brought in the officer in charge of the Burdett case, Detective Inspector Steve Rutherford. He was a well-respected detective, a man known as a cop's cop who had led many murder investigations.
He took the lead in the interviews with Pora and guided him on the part of the video where the police take him to Burdett's house - but he can't identify it.
Should alarm bells have started to ring for Rutherford at that point? Should he have taken notice of the report in the file that concluded Pora shouldn't be considered a suspect? (Soon after the murder, family members had accused him of involvement, but their allegations were dismissed as false and a conspiracy. At that time, too, police had also checked his DNA and found it didn't match DNA found at the murder scene).
We approached Rutherford for an interview in 2013. He wasn't keen to talk to us then but had this to say: 'I think it's best left for the courts to sort it out… I know the facts, you won't know the facts, you'll know some of it… I'm not going to discuss it any further'.
While Rutherford is likely to have recommended Pora be prosecuted, ultimately the decision was down to the Auckland Crown Solicitor. In 1993 that was David Morris, QC, who has since died, and for the retrial in 2000 it was Simon Moore, QC, now a High Court judge.
In both trials, the Crown engaged Paul Davison, QC, also now a High Court judge. Davison cross-examined Pora when he took the stand in the first trial, tying him up in knots and leaving the young man unable to explain why on Earth he would possibly confess to something he hadn't done. If only the explanation - that he had FASD - was available then. (He was not diagnosed until 2014, just before the Privy Council hearing.)
Should Morris, Moore or Davison have called a halt to the prosecution? Pora's team, in the bid for compensation, contended that the prosecution had been carried out in bad faith.
Hansen addressed the point in his report. He concluded that the evidence amassed against Pora was not credible and the prosecution should not have been brought.
'It does not, however, follow that the prosecution did not act in good faith,' wrote Hansen. 'Successive judicial evaluations of the evidence vindicated the decision to prosecute and to continue the prosecution.'
Indeed, Pora's lawyer in 1994 and 2000, Marie Dyhrberg - now a QC - sought to have the confession tapes ruled inadmissible. But a High Court judge ruled against her, a decision which was upheld by the Court of Appeal.
The Court of Appeal featured in his case again, in 1999, when it quashed Pora's convictions after Malcolm Rewa had been found guilty of Burdett's rape. But rather than let the matter lie, it ordered a retrial.
After Rewa's DNA was identified, police had a chance to re-evaluate the case against Pora. The biggest stumbling block was that Rewa had acted alone in at least 24 other sex attacks. Surely, Pora could not be involved in the Burdett attack? That was the conclusion reached by Detective Sergeant Dave Henwood, an expert criminal profiler who started saying in 1996 that Pora was an innocent man.
Instead, police began to look for more evidence implicating Pora.
Williams wrote in a notebook: 'Who should we see to show an association between Hamma [Rewa] and Teina.'
Hansen is scathing on this point: 'There seems to have been no thought given to a wholesale review of the evidence. Instead the investigating team focused on uncovering evidence of a link between Rewa and Pora. Evidence that did not fit with the theory - such as Detective Sergeant Henwood's analysis - was set to one side. The evidence of witnesses of questionable credibility was promoted.'
(Add to that the fact that some of those witnesses were paid).
It's a striking conclusion of the report: that the investigating team and the prosecution decided to proceed with a retrial without the police having reviewed the file.
History shows Pora was convicted a second time, sent back to prison where he would spend another 14 years.
In some senses, you could understand how the system was prepared to leave him to rot - there had been two trials and it had gone to the Court of Appeal. But there had been plenty of disquiet from the outset, and it continued.
In 2006, criminologist and associate professor Greg Newbold told a law conference on miscarriages of justice that Pora's case was 'particularly disturbing'.
Three more years passed before anyone started doing anything about that. Enter Tim McKinnel, the private investigator and former south Auckland cop, who had heard stories at the police bar about Pora being innocent and decided to find out for himself.
He visited Pora in prison and looked through the box of documents he'd kept from the case - about the only possessions Pora had. Now, seven years later, McKinnel's office is stacked from floor to ceiling with documents.
Without McKinnel's perseverance, Pora would still be locked up. Without the lawyers he bought on board, Jonathan Krebs and Ingrid Squire, the case would never have got to the Privy Council.
But did it have to go that far? Couldn't the police hierarchy have intervened when it became obvious there were problems with the convictions? Couldn't the Solicitor-General have stepped in?
McKinnel and Krebs approached the police as early as 2010 suggesting they work together to at least have a look at the mounting evidence and questions. But there was no appetite.
In 2013, Assistant Commissioner Malcolm Burgess told us that there was no need to review the file.
The system would sort it out.
Eventually, you could argue, the system did. But to say that is to ignore the fact that the system failed Teina Pora repeatedly, that the system enabled people to turn the other way when issues arose.
Is that good enough?
We asked the police if there would be action taken in response to the report. The response from a spokesman yesterday was: 'It's too early to say.'