'Gone Fishing' killings: day one of historical murder case revisited at Court of Appeal
Tuesday, 13 August 2024
Convicted murderer Gail Maney has described a Court of Appeal hearing that she hopes will quash her 1999 murder conviction as “a long time coming.”
Tuesday’s hearing is the third time Maney has attempted to clear her name, after being found guilty of ordering the murder of Deane Fuller-Sandys.
Fuller-Sandys disappeared in 1989 and his body has never been found.
Convicted murderer Gail Maney has described a Court of Appeal hearing that she hopes will quash her 1999 murder conviction as “a long time coming”.
Tuesday’s hearing is the third time Maney has attempted to clear her name, after being found guilty of ordering the murder of Deane Fuller-Sandys, who went missing in 1989.
“I have got so much going through my head right now, and I am feeling quite emotional,“ Maney told Stuff as she entered the Court of Appeal
The original Crown case found Maney asked associate Stephen Stone to murder Fuller-Sandys, in retaliation for stealing clothes and drugs from her west Auckland home.
She served 16 years in prison for the crime, which she has always denied she committed, with no body ever being discovered.
Stone too has maintained his innocence over the killing, and is also appealing his conviction.
Lawyers for Stone want his subsequent conviction for the rape and murder of Leah Stephens quashed as well.
The original Crown case argued Stephens was killed to prevent her from going to police after she witnessed Stone murdering Fuller-Sandys.
In court, lawyers for Stone argued an admission of a miscarriage of justice by the Crown was a good reason for the convictions to be quashed.
“A new trial is not feasible,” Stone’s lawyer, Paul Wicks KC, told the court.
Ahead of the hearing, the Crown conceded there were two documents that should have been disclosed to defence lawyers during the 1999 and 2000 retrial.
It said those documents could have changed the outcome for Maney and Stone.
“His conviction in 1999 was a miscarriage of justice as a result of the non disclosure of documents,” Wicks said.
Lawyer Sam Galler, who is also representing Stone, said his client has remained “steadfast in his denial of the offending” in relation to both Fuller-Sandys and Stephens.
He said Stone had only admitted guilt in order to secure his release from jail, where he has been since 1999.
“There is no credible case left and insufficient evidence to form the basis of a retrial,” Galler said.
Lawyers for Gail Maney argued it was their job to persuade the court that the “appropriate course of action” was her acquittal.
Julie-Anne Kincade KC said three of the four witnesses used to convict Maney had been “bullied by police” into accepting the Crown’s original case.
Police had coerced the witnesses into repeating the Crown’s case during the trials, or risk being “in the dock with Mr Stone and Ms Maney”, Kincade said.
“In the past, the Crown has repeatedly demonstrated that the police and the Crown can no longer be trusted in this case,” she said.
“That contamination can not now be undone.”
The Crown is expected to agree to the convictions being quashed, including that of Mark Henriksen and Colin Maney, Gail’s brother, who were found guilty of being accessories to the murder of Fuller-Sandys.
However, it’s likely it will argue there is other strong evidence pointing towards the guilt of Maney and Stone, and it will ask the crown solicitor to make a decision on a retrial.