Good to see Crown Law Independence

The NZ Herald reports:

Crown Law will take over the prosecution of John Banks on a charge of knowingly filing a false election return.

Private prosecutor Graham McCready received a letter today from Solicitor General Michael Heron confirming he would intervene in the case.

This is bad news for John Banks, but good for an independent judicial system. The prosecution of a (former) Government Minister is obviously not something overly helpful to the Government, and it would have been easy for Solictor General to leave it as a private prosecution. But good to see that they will act independently when they think it is the right thing to do.

Banks has a judicial review of the District Court decision to send it to trial, so that has to be dealt with first.