The Crewe murders

Stuff reports:

Leading legal experts are disgusted that Arthur Allan Thomas and his family are again under scrutiny in an inquiry into the Crewe murders.

Wait. Are they saying that because Thomas was found not guilty, that his family are automatically cleared also?

And legal experts are in fact divided, not disgusted.

“The fabrication of evidence against Arthur Allan Thomas was the blackest day in the history of the New Zealand police force, and they should be full of remorse, and they should be trying to make amends,” said Peter Williams QC, Thomas’ former lawyer.

“It disgusts me if they are trying to drag his name through the mud again,” he said.

I agree on the fabrication of evidence being despicable. But how are the Police dragging his name through the mud by interviewing him and his family? It is the family that went rushing to the media that generated the publicity.

“To turn Rochelle’s application for an inquiry into a rehearing of the evidence against Thomas, if they are trying to do that, is repugnant to any citizen’s sense of justice. It is absolutely despicable,” Williams said.

Thomas is a material witness in the case, even if he is not the killer. How could the Police be doing their job if they do not talk to him?

However, the president of the Criminal Bar Association, Tony Bouchier, said police must be able to interview Arthur Thomas again to conduct the inquiry properly.

“What we have is an unsolved murder the police have undertaken to have a look at again.

“In that regard, when there are questions to be put to people, whether they are the Allan Thomas family or not, those questions need to be put.”

So that legal expert says the Police are acting perfectly properly.

But no matter what police find, Arthur Thomas can never be retried.

Law reforms in 2009 allowing defendants to be retried even if they are acquitted of murder do not apply to the Thomas case.

Personally I think it was probably Len Demler, but we will never know.