The All Blacks mental guru, his historic conviction and the failed bid to wipe it

Saturday, 14 December 2024

He’s an expert on overcoming cerebral challenges, but the All Blacks’ head of mental performance has lost a legal scrum of his own.

Former All White Ceri Evans is an Oxford University Rhodes Scholar and internationally recognised forensic psychiatrist, whose high performance expertise has seen him work with some of the world’s biggest athletes and sports teams from Formula One to the NBA and Premier League.

The former head of Canterbury’s forensic psychiatry service has a long list of accomplishments, including taking the stand as an expert witness in court. But once upon a time Evans found himself on the other side of the law*.

In Ashburton in 1984, Evans was convicted of careless driving. The details of his offending are not available publicly, but the then 21-year-old All White was fined $75 and ordered to complete a defensive* driving course in Dunedin, where he was studying medicine. Last year, almost 40 years later, he sought to have his conviction wiped by seeking leave of the High Court to appeal it out of time.

Now 61, Evans’ objective was to be discharged without conviction. He said the conviction had caused him embarrassment, shame and inconvenience when he travelled overseas for work. He applied for name suppression, citing risk to his reputational damage if the fact of his conviction was published.

The Clean Slate Act applied to Evans’ conviction when it was passed into law in 2004. The act allows for a criminal record to be hidden from the public if the person is eligible (if they don’t receive a custodial sentence and fulfil the terms of their sentence). But, crucially for Evans, it does not apply when a person seeks to enter another country and has to declare their convictions. Evans guessed he had declared his conviction 100 times when entering Australia.

According to Evans, in June last year, a border control officer told him to “address” his conviction because the Australian Border Force was “wasting time” on something that had been reviewed multiple times. When Evans went to the United States, he had to attend an interview at its consulate in Auckland to get a visa, where he was asked about his conviction. He said this may have to happen every time he wanted to enter the States.

His lawyer, Ian Hunt, argued the implications constituted a miscarriage of justice. In addition, dismissing Evans’ name suppression application would subvert the Clean Slate Act, Hunt argued, thereby “causing prejudice to the maintenance of the law”.

In her judgment in August this year, Justice Melanie Harland disagreed.

The consequences of the conviction were not out of proportion with the gravity of Evans’ offending, she said. While it caused him inconvenience and embarrassment, it had not stopped him from travelling. The risk of reputational damage did not meet the extreme hardship threshold either, the judge said. She declined Evans leave to appeal his conviction out of time, and his application for name suppression.

Evans took his fight to the Court of Appeal.

The attempt to appeal his conviction was rejected due to lack of jurisdiction. The name suppression appeal was heard in November, and determined in a judgment issued on Tuesday that largely agreed with Justice Harland. The clean slate regime was much narrower than a suppression order, the judges said, and Evans had to satisfy the court that publication of his name would prejudice the maintenance of law, which he fell “considerably short” of doing.

“On the contrary, maintenance of the law would be undermined when a person convicted of a criminal offence waits for 40 years before trying to overturn their conviction and, at that person’s request, the court hears and considers the application under a cone of silence; at least in so far as the identity of the applicant is concerned. Such an approach is the antithesis of open justice,” the judgment reads.

“Although Dr Evans may suffer some temporary stress and embarrassment if his name is published in relation to these proceedings, that stress and embarrassment falls significantly short of the levels of consequences and outcomes that are normally required before a court will displace the presumption in favour of an open criminal justice system.”

Both Evans’ conviction and name suppression bids were dismissed.

Evans did not respond to requests for comment.

In a brief statement, his lawyer Ian Hunt said: “This matter arose because it was recommended that Dr Evans take steps to address a minor and historic driving offence in 1984 (covered by the Clean Slate legislation) which the Australian Border Force considered to be insignificant, with review on each entry to Australia being unnecessary and a waste of time for it and Dr Evans.”

Ceri Evans stellar career

Evans helped the All Blacks win Rugby World Cup titles in 2011 and 2015.

He worked closely with captain Richie McCaw, former world heavyweight boxing champion Joseph Parker, and Mercedes Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton.

In 2016, Arsene Wenger signed him up to help with the mentality of Premier League giants Arsenal.

As a football player, Evans was capped 85 times for the All Whites between 1980 and 1993.

_* Correction:** An earlier version of this article said a charge against _Evans put him “inside the dock”. In fact, he was not required to appear in court. The article also_ incorrectly described the court-ordered training as a “dangerous” driving course. (Updated January 13, 2025)_**