New Zealand's outrageous approach to injustice

Friday, 13 January 2023

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)

Janet Wilson is a freelance journalist who has also worked in communications, including with the National Party in 2020. She is a regular contributor to Stuff.

OPINION: It was American founding father and polymath Benjamin Franklin who said: “Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are.”

If you adhere to those sentiments, then it’s time to get incandescently angry at the arcane way injustice is served in New Zealand. Or not, as is all too often the case.

Why is it happening? Because it appears redress falls into the hands of those who contributed to the original injustice.

What’s more, compensation isn’t a legal right if you’ve wrongfully been locked up in New Zealand, but is instead extra gratia. That is, it is left to politicians to decide if the person is innocent on “the balance of probabilities”.

* Man controversially convicted of murder to be released from prison

* Payments for wrongfully convicted to be increased

Alan Hall, during his quest for justice which finally led to the Supreme Court quashing his murder conviction after 36 years.

Behind high-profile stories such as Teina Pora and Peter Ellis lies a considerable roll-call of those ill-treated by the justice system in the past 10 years. Since 2012, there have been 893 people who have had 2303 convictions quashed, or quashed and sent back to the courts.

Each represents a quiet desperation for justice to be seen to be done.

Nothing exemplifies that desperation more than the treatment the justice system has meted out to Alan Hall.

Minister of Justice Kiri Allan has continued the cruel treatment of Alan Hall, further dragging out his case by insisting on yet another inquiry, this one into his case for compensation.

In 1986, Hall was convicted for the 1985 killing of Arthur Easton in his Papakura home after a violent home invasion.

Among the scandalous details which have since emerged about the investigation, police chose to conceal key witness statements describing the assailant as a 1.83 metre (6 feet) tall, broad, Māori man.

Hall was a slightly built Pākehā and 1.7m tall.

This action by the police helped ensure that Hall spent 19 years in prison, and another 17 on parole, before the Supreme Court quashed his conviction last June.

The Chief Justice, Helen Winkelmann, said Hall’s case was a substantial miscarriage of justice.

Erasing the maxim of “justice delayed is justice denied” from her own legal memory banks, Justice Minister Kiritapu Allan ignored the Supreme Court’s unequivocal judgment, and ordered Rodney Hansen, KC, to investigate whether Hall was innocent and deserving of compensation, adding months to the compensation process.

After all, the justice system will protect itself first and foremost over the little guy, even in the most egregious of circumstances.

And in Alan Hall’s case, those circumstances are egregious,made more so by the Government dragging its heels in paying compensation.

Rodney Hansen’s inquiry will be the fifth since Hall’s acquittal, and follow two police reviews of the original investigation, another KC’s examination of the Crown’s role, and an Independent Police Conduct Authority investigation.

Which raises the question, will police and prosecutors be charged for knowingly corrupting the case?

Or is the sheer weight of investigations simply the smoky veil the Ministry of Justice has employed to avoid responsibility for ruining a man’s life?

Then Justice Minister Andrew Little (centre) at the announcement of the new Criminal Cases Review Commission in 2020, with chief commissioner Colin Carruthers (left) and Hamilton MP Jamie Strange. Since then, the commission has sent one case back to the courts.

Because when it comes to blame, the ministry is not without fault, having rejected three of Hall’s claims to prove his innocence through the royal prerogative of mercy, in 1987, 1988 and 1993, relying on evidence in the latter two applications which Crown Law itself has since acknowledged was simply wrong.

Last September, Justice Minister Allan had the temerity to claim that there was no conflict of interest in the ministry being involved in Hall’s claim for compensation, which was at complete odds with the fact that when Hall’s case was presented to officials in 2019, the ministry effectively wiped its hands of it – just three years before the Supreme Court quashed his convictions.

And even though Hall has spent the past 37 years at the mercy of the justice system, there’s no guarantee that compensation is a given.

In the past 25 years, only eight cases have received compensation, with $6.8 million paid out.

Politicians will tell you the reason for those paltry compensations is because it is taxpayer money, which they are accountable for.

Of course, that same responsibility doesn’t apply to taxpayer money when it comes to their own salaries, where the lowliest backbencher earns three times the median income.

No doubt injustice victims will see the formation of Te Kahui Taturi Ture, the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), as a positive step in amending justice’s imbalance.

If anything, it proves the grinding nature of righting the wrong.

Out of the 340 cases it has received, the CCRC sent its first case to the Court of Appeal before Christmas, 2½ years after it was established.

Let’s hope that it, too, doesn’t fall prey to the wall of silence that victims experience from authorities because, as the Ministry of Justice contends, admitting error undermines the criminal justice system.

In fact, the opposite is true.