General Debate 9 May 2009

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reid

Sigh.

Comedy Festival posters withdrawn after complaints

Dyslexics of the World, UNTIE!
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May 9, 2009 10:14am
Paul Marsden

Encouraging news today that there is movement afoot to review Scott Watson‘s conviction. It is an obscenity that this individual lies incarcerated for a crime he did not commit or, at the very least, should not have been convicted on the Crown’s specious argument and evidence.

Watson is the wall poster for all that is wrong with the entire, NZ judicial system, and the competency and integrity of those who sit in judgement upon us.

[DPF: So how did the mystery ketch then manage to not turn up in any of the scores of photos taken?]
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May 9, 2009 10:15am
reid

Yes there’s various people in that category aren’t there Paul.

One thing that disturbs me greatly is a comment made by a retired High Court judge some years ago who said words to the effect that he knew of quite a few cases where people had been wrongly convicted yet did nothing about these.

Which means he’s more concerned about the integrity of the system than the outcome. The system is beautiful, wisely and intelligently designed, but is very poor at recognising its fallibility. It’s philosophy is based on releasing a thousand guilty people rather than wrongly convicting one innocent, in recognition of the fact that the entire resources of the State are available to the prosecution. That’s the philosophy, but the practical application of it often produces far different outcomes and it’s about time the criminal appeal process was overhauled, which could be done if you had a will, without opening the floodgates to frivolous appellants and while retaining public confidence in the integrity of the system, both of which are critical to maintain.
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May 9, 2009 10:32am
Paul Marsden

DPF: I’m a yachtsman. I have entered harbour’s at night and left by daybreak. Have you read Hunter’s book? Have you seen his documentary? Have you heard of over a hundred sightings of the ketch that were all ignored by the police? I could go on infinitum.

[DPF: Yes read book. Totally unconvinced. Again not one single photo by all those sightings. And the DNA on the hair on Watson’s boat is quite compelling]
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May 9, 2009 10:43am
Murray

Reid, as Kiwiblogs only openly dyslexic commenter. What a fcuking laod of siht.
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May 9, 2009 10:51am
billyborker

A great reason to stare at a gorgeous woman in her underware.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1178499/BRA-VO-Victory-women-Mail-M-S-axes-big-bust-surcharge.html

A storm in a DD cup is over.
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May 9, 2009 11:09am
Paul Marsden

DPF: By today’s standard of DNA matching, I disagree that the DNA was compelling at all. However, for arguments sake, I will agree that it was a hair strand belonging to Oliva Hope. Are you aware that the average person loses 100 + hair strands form their scalp each day? Watson was in close proximity to Hope during the course of the evening and could have easily hosted a strand of her hair upon his person, and onto his vessel. Perhaps Hope was also menstruating where her hair shed may have also been greater? Perhaps she also had some other physical ailment that induced a higher than normal shed? Who knows? ? Importantly however, the hair was not examined to determine its stage of growth. Human hair goes through three stages of growth, anagen, categen and telegen, If the hair was in the telegen (resting cycle .ie shedding phase) then it could be argued the hair could have easily have been hosted aboard Watson‘s vessel. Conversely, if the hair was say in the anagen stage (ie. the growth cycle), then the hair will only detach from the scalp through trauma. Without my extrapolating further, the defence could shape compelling arguments around both scenarios. Next time you’re in Auckland DPF, go to the Loaded Hog (especially on a Saturday or a Sunday, and when the sun is shining upon the wooden floor), and you will see hundreds (if not thousands) of shedded hair strands dancing in the sunlight. Now, capture a picture of that scene and show it to a jury, and see what they think.
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May 9, 2009 11:33am
dime

“Perhaps she also had some other physical ailment that induced a higher than normal shed?”

HAHAHHA grasping at straws much
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May 9, 2009 12:05pm
big bruv

Paul.

It is not an obscenity that Watson is in prison, he may well not have killed Olivia and Ben but prison is still the right place for the piece of human filth.

Call it karma.
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May 9, 2009 12:19pm
Paul Marsden

BB. I don’t know Watson, I don’t care about him, and I can’t say with 100% certainty if he is guility or, not. (only he knows that)

What I can say with certainty however, that it is an absolute travesty of justice that he should have been found guilty on the ‘evidence’ presented by the crown. In my view, it is nothing more than fabricated nonsense and an insult to the intelligence of all NZ’rs.

We should all be concerned. It could happen to anyone of us.
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May 9, 2009 12:51pm
Murray

Were you in the courtroom Paul?

I haven’t seen all the evicence only what the media decided i should see plus what i got from one of the guys on the patrol boats doing the sonar scans. So if you’ve got all the info feel free to share.
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May 9, 2009 12:54pm
Patrick Starr

“and I can’t say with 100% certainty if he is guility or, not”

No one needed to be. The threshold is beyond reasonable doubt
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May 9, 2009 1:00pm
Paul Marsden

Patrick. Threshold? What threshold? All of the Crown’s circumstantial evidence has been exposed as both shonky, and wanting.
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May 9, 2009 1:11pm
Paul Marsden

The entire populace of NZ was beying for blood at the time, and the police and judicary felt the pressure and succumbed accordingly. The judge despised Watson and justice flew out the window.

As often in these cases, it took a layman with an analytical mind and the clear light of day, to carefully examine the evidence and poke a hole in it a mile wide.
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May 9, 2009 1:21pm
reid

Guys, I suggest regardless of individual cases, there is a wider issue here which is an apparent reluctance to admit a mistake may have occurred and the glacial speed at which the system operates whenever a series of prima facie legitimate questions arises surrounding someone’s guilt.

This could be addressed without throwing out the baby but despite repeated cases over many decades, those with the power to change the system remain completely silent.

Why?
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May 9, 2009 1:23pm
Paul Marsden

reid.

Egos.
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May 9, 2009 1:33pm
Inventory2

To change the subject completely, John Roughan has a very interesting column in this morning’s Herald about Phil Twyford – well worth a read:

http://keepingstock.blogspot.com/2009/05/poor-phil-v2.html
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May 9, 2009 1:33pm
Rex Widerstrom

reid asks:

This could be addressed without throwing out the baby but despite repeated cases over many decades, those with the power to change the system remain completely silent.

Why?

I’d agree with Paul Marsden that egos are one reason. But the justice system is the biggest and most powerful “club” in society. If a police officer deliberately fits someone up, the response of other officers is to close ranks around him or her even if they themselves would never contemplate such behaviour.

If a judge makes a ruling that’s well outside the norms the best you can hope for is that on appeal it’ll get shifted back about half way to what used to be the norm – thus shifting the precedents other judges uses as guidance – because no judicial officer wants to call another a complete idiot.

A few of examples I’ve dealt with personally of late.

A judge passed a ridiculously light (non-custodial) sentence on a sex offender. There was a public outcry against him. So the next offender who appeared before him, on much less serious charges, was given 28 years (yes, more than a murderer). On appeal it was reduced to 18 – still more than most murderers – and it was made clear the justices wouldn’t budge any further not because they saw no merit in the argument that there should have been parity with similar offending but because they didn’t want to overly embarrass their “brother judge”.

A judge tragically lost his daughter to drink-driving. Now if one is unlucky enough to appear in court on a relatively minor traffic-related offence (driving without a licence, say) he will deny bail and remand in custody, effectively handing someone a 6 month term of incarceration (if pleading not guilty and waiting for a trial) or one of 1 – 2 months if awaiting sentencing. Goodbye job (or partner’s job, if you have kids), mortgage, etc etc. Then he follows precedent and imposes a fine. The rest of the judiciary know this, but take a “Eh, whaddya gonna do?” approach.

Criminal 1 robs someone and stabs them twice. Criminal 2 robs 2 people by simply threatening harm, but doesn’t touch a hair on anyone’s head. Both are young females, but Criminal 1 has a long record while Criminal 2 has none. Criminal 2 gets twice the sentence of Criminal 1 on the basis that there were two offences… the relative seriousness is ignored. Because the sentencing justice is a former senior prosecutor and thus a life member of “the club” the Appeal justices refuse to look at individual circumstances and instead rule that Criminal 2’s 5 year sentence is “within the scale for this offending” and refuse to bring it into line.

I could also mention vested interests, career protection and a host of other factors but my experience leads me to believe that the simple fact that most reviews of criminal matters – whether at police or judicial level – are conducted by people whose first and deepest instinct is to protect members of “the club” even if they don’t know them personally. It’s just the way it is. No wonder people used to think it was all about being Stonecutters or whatever… that was merely coincidental to everyone involved being in the biggest secret society of all – the legal system.
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May 9, 2009 2:48pm
Paul Marsden

Rex. Yes, that’s the way it is, as it is the way of human nature. And that is where things can go so terribly wrong in the justice system in NZ. By way of example, a well-known and prominent member of my family used his contacts in the police, on at least two occasions I know of, to pervert the course of justice. In both cases, the police actions where criminal (one involving the cover-up to the circumstances of a death). I also used to be in the emergency services and I know about looking after our own kind. Most people have not been exposed and perhaps never will be, to the workings of the courts in NZ. I have seen some shocking instances of how wrong the ‘system’ can be, and the high price paid when a singular judge errs. It is at this point, things can turn to custard (fast) and is often the start of the journey to the point of no return.
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May 9, 2009 3:18pm
reid

Excellent post, Rex. Perhaps its time to implement a criminal law ombudsman’s office.

There’s a constitutional issue regarding implementing judicial liability for careless or even malicious decisions, perhaps its time we looked at that as well, in the criminal area. Without using lawyers to do so, of course.
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May 9, 2009 3:24pm
Paul Marsden

reid. A good place to start would be to reinstate the Privy Council. It will be particulary interesting to see the debate around this issue if Bain is acquitted.
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May 9, 2009 3:57pm
reid

I agree Paul. Unfortunately, like Clark’s anti-nuke law and getting rid of the strike fighters, for some reason there seems little public recognition of what we lost and not much groundswell to bring it back.

Puzzling to me how so many people can be so stupid in relation to something so important, but I’ve learned to never overestimate the capacity of the reef-fish to shoot themselves not just in the foot but also in the head. Fuck they’re dumb.
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May 9, 2009 4:03pm
Paul Marsden

Gawd reid, don’t get me started on the strike fighters! When I was a kid I used to look skyward and dared to dream. Most people in NZ would not understand the economic loss to the country in stealing this aspiration away from kids who had the intellect and capability of becoming the creme de le creme of skilled individuals (including all their highly skilled support crews); some of whom could possibly become NZ’s future leaders. No they buggar off.
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May 9, 2009 4:32pm
Paul Marsden

..Now they just bugger-off and take their abilities elsewhere.
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May 9, 2009 4:36pm
Portia

A good place to start would be to reinstate the Privy Council. It will be particularly interesting to see the debate around this issue if Bain is acquitted.

…or the debate around this issue if David Bain is re-convicted.

Will our Court of Appeal end up vindicated for finding that:
we have no doubt that any reasonable jury considering the new evidence along with the old would find David guilty. The new evidence simply does not have the force and effect necessary to raise a reasonable doubt against the cumulative force of the case against David.?

Or will the thumbs-up go to the Privy Council, for leaving it up to a jury to decide whether or not the new evidence made a difference to the eventual verdict?

Only a few more weeks now, and we’ll know for sure.

PS The Court of Appeal’s decision is publicly available to read here

And the Privy Council’s decision is here
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May 9, 2009 5:54pm
joeAverage

TV1 and TV# are worth a watch tonight , the fucker is dead, and the police dog lives (sorry i love dogs)sue me and demerites
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May 9, 2009 6:00pm
Paul Marsden

Portia. I wonder what in their view, constitutes a ‘reasonable’ jury?

If any of these learned members of the bench had spent the time and effort analysing all of the evidence (as only Karam has done), then they might be in a position to make such comments regarding the weight and veracity of any ‘new evidence’. But of course, none of them have.

In the meantime, they are in a no better position to make such assumptions, than you or I are.
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May 9, 2009 6:55pm
Paul Marsden

And as the saying goes…..’Assumption is the mother of all fuck-ups’
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May 9, 2009 7:06pm
Paul Marsden

DPF: Keith Hunter has asked me to post here, on his behalf.

Paul

Your thesis is very interesting. For what it’s worth, the evidence given in court was that Olivia was indeed menstruating at the time. With or without this DPF would surely agree that the Crown case he finds compelling would have more force if it had been shown that Watson’s was the only boat at Furneaux carrying a hair from Olivia. As this was not shown, he doesn’t know whether the compelling hairs were matched in a dozen or more boats, thereby creating equally compelling evidence against a dozen or more other suspects.

He must surely agree that the hair evidence would have had more force if the samples tested, in both Australia and New Zealand, had been shown to not to have been contaminated, as is normally required with DNA evidence. But they were not so shown, as DPF knows having reading Trial By Trickery at pages 180-181. And he would appreciate the greater force if the long blonde hairs discovered in the bags of short black hairs at the second inspection March 1998 had been discovered at the first inspection in January, but, as he knows from reading TxT at pages 175-178, the long blonde hairs were not found amongst the short black hairs the first time and may well have arrived in the bags after that first inspection. And he would certainly concede that the hairs would be more properly triumphant if someone had explained the strange slit in the bag of reference hairs taken from Olivia’s bedroom – but no-one explained it, as he knows from reading pp177-178 of TxT.

Obviously DPF is easily compelled. His content with the jury’s verdict in a murder trial puts aside the rage of the two principal eyewitnesses at being tricked by the police into identifications they have now retracted, and dismissses unremarked the evidence of every single eyewitness that Watson is the wrong man and his boat is the wrong boat. He finds irrelevant the constant stream of false statements put to the court by the prosecutors, none of whom has challenged these accusations of the book. He, presumably, has evidence-based cause to disagree with the book’s meticulously researched charges that the prosecutors deliberately concealed their case from everyone – the court, the jury and the defence – until it was too late for Watson to defend himself against it, and that the Court of Appeal gave a judgment which included a central claim which is patently untrue and which, if corrected, would have unquestionably led to a retrial..

Instead he is completely persuaded by two hairs which are undoubtedly questionable on several counts and which may have been matched many times on other boats, and by the alleged absence of any photograph of a ketch. Another commentator might find these comparative trifles but DPF prefers them to the testimony of about a dozen witness who all testified to having seen a ketch of the required description in the same location outside the view of the only photographs put before the court. Unfortunately they were unaware that they would need to have their cameras at hand to satisfy DPF.

But I wonder which photos he is referring to and how he knows the ketch was not pictured in them. I would have thought that if there were wide views covering all of the relevant waters off Furneaux Lodge which showed no ketch at anchorage they would have been put before the court.. None were. The only photos put to the court covered an area up to 200-250 metres from the shore, while the witness evidence put the ketch seen about 300 metres off shore, as DPF knows from reading Chapter three of TxT. He would be even clearer about this were he to view the end of Part One of Murder On The Blade?’ If he studied the evidence even closer he would find that the photos put before the court as taken at 6am could not have been taken until after 7.30 am, giving the mystery ketch plenty of time to depart unphotographed. If he checked closer still he would come across a multitude of witnesses whose photographs were never returned to them, photographs which might well have depicted a ketch in the Pines area 300 metres off-shore but which might have provided an unacceptable affront to the police case. He would also come across the 14 January 1998 statement of the 16 year old witness who saw a 40 foot white yacht with a dark stripe above the waterline leaving Furneaux very slowly just before dawn, a yacht which was never identified, and unfortunately, not photographed by the16 year old witness.

I suspect DPF is playing with the facts here in the same fashion as the prosecutors played with them, a trick he must have learned from reading the book. Well – at least it indicates he has in fact read and learned something from it but the learning had nothing to do with a fair minded investigation of the facts. I hope I’m never before a court in which he is amongst the jurors. Vive la bagatelle!
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May 9, 2009 7:47pm
Comrade MOT

When is watson going to get his retrail? Whether he did it or not there certainly appear to be problems with the fairness of the trial. Bain got his retrail. While I couldn’t vouch for watsons innocence, Watson’s case seems stronger than Bain’s and he got a retrial.
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May 9, 2009 8:13pm
jcuknz

heavan protect us from the media frensy over the latest shooting case … thank god for Concert programme and my CD player.
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May 10, 2009 9:30am

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