Teina Pora - 20 years prison for being a liar?

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10806944

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/assault-and-homicide/news/article.cfm?c_id=124&objectid=10806923

Nobody deserves to be falsely imprisoned for 20 years even if they were once a neighbourhood lout, a wise-arse strutting his stuff and casing the hood. Even if that person demonstrated a propensity to tell lies to such an extent you got the totally unbelievable with the maybes. Where do you get off believing a guy like that, we all probably know somebody like that. Somebody where you finally reach the point you don't believe anything they say, without checking or being absolutely sure they're telling the truth.

Such people are a menace particularly in situations where people must rely on each others honesty to survive, where critical information must be able to be relied on straight away and not need an assessment of the truthfulness of the person offering the information. They're not the guys you want in the Army where your life might be put at risk, nor in security situations where a number of steps need to be taken to ensure safety of a machine shut down or start up, the freshness of food, the reliability of a water source and so the lists go on. Fantasists and liars are a danger, not only to themselves but to others.

Teina Pora from all reports was all of those things when he was a teenager and may still be now. But if you were a gang member, armed forces personnel, police officer then Teina Pora's danger to you increases because Teina Paora is also somebody that would drop you in it for money. He wouldn't care for example that you hadn't done anything but would accuse you anyway if there was something in it for him and if he could get away with it. That's Teina Pora, once a street slouch, leaning on the not so bright side, brown and down and out talking in a police station in response to offers of rewards for information leading to the conviction of person responsible for the murder of Susan Burdett featured in the Herald links above.

By then police were 12 months down the track with an unsolved murder, one with no apparent direction and clues. They were soon able to stitch up the fantasist to the point they could charge him with the Burdett murder and a load of pressure was off them thanks to the various stories a co-operative Teina gave not realising he was dropping himself in it. By 1994 Paora was serving life for the crime and 2 years later semen linked to Susan Burdett's was identified as that of serial, lone acting rapist Malcom Rewa. Rewa was twice acquitted of the murder, but remains convicted of her rape. Police still stuck with 'their' man Paora as being guilty and he was convicted a second time at a retrial in 2000.

So we have Rewa raping Susan Burdett but not killing her, while we have Pora linked to the scene only by his own inconsistent statements and no supporting evidence but 'killing her.' Time to have a closer look at Rewa. At the time of Susan Burdett's death he was a 40 year old 'senior' member of the Highway 61 motor cycle gang, this was the reason police said that he hadn't been fingered by Paora because he was scared to do so. Apparently, the Mongrel Mob of which Paora was once a youthful associate held no similar fears for Poara and he named at least 3 Mongrel Mob members in his early efforts to gain the rewards. Worth considering here that the Mongrel Mob often have young members and associates, some of whom 'take the rap' for older members to get their gangcolours and that type of thing - but mainly because they're stood over, threatened or have their family threatened. South Auckland could be described as the turf of the mob. And by the same token an unsophisticated liar looking for $20,000 would settle on the mob as an appealing, and persuasive group to fit the criteria of public opinion of South Auckland rapists. I recall that this may have been about the time of an infamous rap at Ambury Park at a mob 'convention.'

It should be recalled that when Pora 'showed' police where the crime had happened he couldn't find the right street in the first instance and then later when 'assisted' with directions couldn't identify the right house. Take a look at Rewa, going under the nickname of hammer, fit and fairly physical as a younger man but no enduring physical presence under pressure, tough except for when the chips were down or real tough guys about. Highway 61 may have been around from the sixties but their heyday was passed by the early seventies when the characteristics I've described of Rewa saw them ridiculed for being informants and renamed the Hideaways in many circles because of lack of courage in many street fights that featured earlier on before gangs settled down to their 'own business' and largely avoided feuding. Of course the mob, much bigger, and less sophisticated took longer to 'settle down' and probably could really be described as out of the public eye even now - largely because of lack of discipline and unity while using soft options such as kids like Paora once was to commit crime or nod the head to it. That was their power, coming back at individuals or their families who broke the already 'broken code' that operated among many of them.

So a brighter spark than Pora wouldn't have fingered the mob for a crime that Pora had no idea who had committed, if only for safety reasons and understanding how the streets work. But as the links point out Paora isn't blessed with brains. So it's a mess, a bloody big mess because the cops took an easy route to solve a crime, got their 'man' only to find out it was somebody else. True to this type of situation, they didn't shut down and have a think about it, perhaps have the evidence reviewed by an independent senior officer from another district see that there must have been a mistake, realise they'd pick from Pora's lies that which suited them for a conviction and discarded that which didn't. Instead they linked a 40 year old gang serial rapist who always worked alone, who in fact raped within his own gang 'community' to a 17 year old fantasist with connections to another 'rival' gang.

Bizarre enough? When the Pora case got to be reconsidered in the Appeal Court for the very good reason that evidence emerged that was at odds with every different thing that Paora had said when selling himself, and some people he falsely named a guilty, down the river The Chief Justice observed that the Crown had appeared to be 'selective' in saying that Pora 'told a pack of lies' about almost everything except his involvement. I note here that when Pora was convicted the second time the police had found 2  good old reliable 'gaol house informants' but still no direct evidence that he was ever at the Burdett home  before the day he needed to be shown where it was.

So we have the often routine miscarriage of justice tools at work, no direct evidence, reliance of prisoners singing their heads off out of tune and most of all the selective words of a psychopathic liar, the defendant himself. There are problems everywhere but a foremost one seems to have been the Appeal Court, when the Chief Justice pointed out the police 'selection' of facts to suit themselves how could it have resulted in a retrial where the only 'real' evidence were informers that took years to surface? Sometimes witnesses are not allowed to give evidence because of their unreliability, some times confessions are ruled inadmissible because they were bribed from a suspect in some way. In the Pora case we had a 'confession' that was totally unreliable from start to finish, undermined not only for that reason but because none of the detail could be  sustained by other evidence. In many cases a confession proven a total fabrication - in fairness it was too unreliable to go to a second jury. Once the remaining 'case' against Pora was examined it had one significant reason not to go to a jury - the rape of Susan Burdett by Rewa. The secret witnesses are an absolute joke. All they can possibly tell is there own versions of what Pora might have been saying, and more than likely of what he didn't say but which might help them out of prison.

The head of the inquiry Andy Lovelock now relies on the 2 convictions as proof of something, when there must be abroad opinion that the 2 convictions are proof of a 'conveniently' solved crime by a liar of convenience who has been rewarded with 20 years in the slammer. This is a case that would be pulled apart by the Privy Council, particularly where there has already been judicial note of the 'safety' of the 'confession' but allowed to circulate through police files, police prison deals and back to the High Court. What makes the police position even weaker is that they are now criticised for not releasing material to Pora's defence team, while at the same time a noted 'crime profiler' and recently retired officer Dave Henwood has given his opinion that Rewa, like the time of a clock, always acted alone. Henwood said that 'it's one that has stuck in the craw.' One it now remains clear that the police couldn't let go and which even our Chief Justice was unable to recognise it was a case to be thrown out along with all the other lies of Teina Pora.