These are unprecedented times in the New Zealand Justice system. Right when there are steady falls in the crime rate with crimes of violence falling, when police are resourced enough to be investigating burglaries and other crime while at the same time promoting a 'rescue and save' mission on South Auckland youth that the country will reap the long term benefits from for years to come, we have the struggling Minister of Justice Judith Collins, locked in a time warp.
Being Judith can't be an easy job. Yet being Judith and at the same time the Minister of Justice appears to be an impossibility. The whole country knows that there are several high profile convictions that are flawed and won't go away. I suggest they represent not a series of individual problems but a accumulation of problems into one mass and how the country is dealing with them is left in the hands of a myopic practitioner whose political aspirations cloud her every move.
The subject of the ability of the current Minister of Justice being able to deal with even a single case from the number of examples of current Miscarriages of Justice is exhaustive, not least because the Minister has made it so. However, a place to start is to look at whether this Minister has the tools and intellect to manoeuvre the issues safely forward in a robust, and fair way, capable of satisfying the majority of New Zealanders. We have two glaring examples that indicate she can't, that she has floundered at the first hurdle.
That hurdle would have to be the Bain case in which she has invested deeply in denying Justice and Due Process to David Bain. A denial to the extent she has been exposed as manipulating behind the scenes against David Bain and the international jurist Ian Binnie. She has effectively been 'taken' to Court for operating an 'independent' 'parallel' version of Executive Power taken from the middle ages, as though she has the independent 'powers' of ruler pre the signing of the Magna Carta. That's a lot on this Minister's plate without a single thought, it appears, by either the Minister herself (for she in the first instance is the most responsible) or her caucus colleagues, that at least while the inquiry into her conduct is resolved in the Auckland High Court that she should not be continuing to administer the role which extends to other cases also, as yet, unresolved.
One of those cases is that of Scott Watson and whom the Minister 'dismissed' an application for exercise of the 'Royal Prerogative of Mercy' (how grand that all sounds if you're not Scott or the 1000s of New Zealanders concerned about the case.) The application was 'reviewed' by an old Government favourite, Ms McDonald, who it appears is a favoured 'gun for hire' to such an extent her involvement in the review had been greeted with cynicism even before the lengthy exercise was completed and her hefty cheque banked to the satisfaction of this Minister.
This, added to the revelations of the plot against Justice Binnie, many would think make a mockery of the title of the word Justice. No less so because of who the Minister has counted among those in her 'inner court,' her 'confidantes,' 'advisors' and those tasked to spread propaganda and stitch together 'legal' arguments for the already bewildered. We see among their number the highly paid and 'reliable to the cause Ms McDonald,' 2 'fallen' ex Judges, a reporter with a history of persecuting the wrongly convicted and a blubbery want to be 'go to hard man' and his sobbing counterpart who make up just two of his personalities. The Court of an informed and liberal thinking progressive Minister? or simply tried and 'true' deadbeats?
An invigorated Minister new to the job may have well accepted the challenge of 'aged' cases of injustice with an enthusiasm to package a novel, expedient and fiscally responsible reply to the task before her. But here we have a Minister stuck for ideas apart from bludgeoning and bullying while paying out her hired help to paint over the cracks and fool some of the people, some of the time.
The very same Judith who told the public that their children couldn't be fully protected from on line bullying, and encouragement to self-harm or suicide, until she implemented a new law, which she described as 'world leading.' Yes, indeed, but not as world leading as The Harassment Act already enshrined in legislation. Being Judith must be very difficult some days.
Nostalgia, in a 2011 comment you have an email with details about someone seeing a ketch that fitted the description of that given by some witnesses in the Watson case. You also mention that the full email, unredacted, was on the votemenot website.
ReplyDeleteI'm just trying to follow this up to see what that boat was and if it was related. Votemenot no longer exists although it is on the wayback machine, there's a lot to search. Any chance that you have the original or recall the details of the craft ?
Be very interested to find out if you do.
Anyone with knowledge of the Watson case knows their exists a yacht never identified publicly as the police refuse to acknowledge its existence despite numerous sightings around that time one of which was even by a police officer trained in observation..
ReplyDeleteNumerous yachts have had their names throw in the mix some of which by the press have been ridiculously unlike the description of the actual one seen..
Reporters named Lonebird the yacht bought by the drug smuggler Sir thomas Fry but in truth that yacht was far larger a different colour and was being used as a backpacker accomodation at the time..so much for investigative journalism
His other yacht the one he actually used Ngaire Wha was likewise identified by the press also totally alien to the discription of the actual yacht.
Rongomau another seen by a Noth & South columnist and photographed again unlike the the one seen over the time in the sounds..
Steppenwolf was a name bantered about for years but Chris Watson has stated that that yacht has been discounted so I assume that be the truth..
Numerous other yacht names show up in the police investigation but by my actual amateur investigations I can discount the vast majority bar two..
The two left interestingly are also not similar in appearance to the sketch but one was owned by a famous personality and later the two sailors went on to become murderers a couple of years later..
The last was owned by a Supreme Court judge and in all honestly is the closest match to the description of the unknown yacht I have seen it was sold a year later and now resides in Thailand
I think the vessel that is possibly now in Thailand is the one photographed in Wellington. A lot of what you have written is familiar to me as information forwarded by a person looking for the ketch. I don't clearly recall the two sailors that went onto become murderers but that they were from Nelson seems to have some familiarity. I don't have access to the archives of those communications at the moment, they are stored elsewhere. I may check back over them but it seems to be a less helpful course at the moment compared to tests on the 2 hairs on the blankets, how they may have got there, whether they are clearly linked to Olivia, how they might have survived being 'missed' in the earlier thorough search of the blanket, the chances of both hairs being missed, the chances of 2 being found together and so on. I think the Minister, as she has the power to do, should have sought an independent review and examination of that evidence. I say that particularly because in throwing out the application The Crown has virtually said that the hairs are insurmountable evidence of guilt and that suddenly identifications, missing ketches and so on are over shadowed by, what is to me, very suspect evidence.
ReplyDeleteProbability in nDNA is based on matching 9 of 13 loci in one chromosome then calculating the number of searches needed to find another person on a population the same 9 of 13 matching loci. For instance,if you start with 65,000 people and do a pairwise match of all of them, you are actually making over 2 billion separate comparisons (65,000 * 64,999/2)or a probability 2 billion to 1. If you aren’t just looking for a match on 9 specific loci, but rather on any 9 of 13 loci, then for each of those pairs of people there are over 700 different combinations that are being searched, so all told, you end up doing about 1.4 trillion searches!
ReplyDeleteThe probability in the Sounds nDNA was given 28,000 to 1 or 28 thousand searches so given an unrelated population [female] of 2 million the number of matching locus was likely only 2-3 of 13 possible matches so in fact the DNA evidence is very weak as there would be several thousand females who would match at 2 loci. To find two unrelated people who matched at all 13 loci would be 114 trillion to 1 Only Identical Twins have identical nDNA though siblings can be identified and biological relationship to a parent identified because the number of locus likely to be the same is known but in forensic science DNA testing it is never to be assumed the sample and control are related as that eliminates the need to search multiple times. All the tests in the sounds testing proved was that the hair alleged to have been found on Blade was from Olivia OR Amelia Hope as the Mitochondrial DNA [mDNA]testing and they were both their mothers daughters. The mDNA was contaminated by foreign nDNA and as the same hairs were nDNA tested those tests contaminated as well. The usual source of hair contamination is a shared comb or hair brush. Given the control hairs were also contaminated it is very likely they had a common source, Olivia hair brush where the control samples were from and was delivered to the ESR lab about a half hour before the hairs were "found".
The fact that Kristy McDonald Q C could state there was no risk of a miscarriage of justice, when key eye witnesses for the Crown, Wallace and McNeilly, have gone public saying they were tricked by the police into a wrongful identification, is frankly mind boggling. Only a justice minister desperate to preserve the status quo could believe or accept such utter garbage.
ReplyDeleteI don't mind Kristy McDonald looking at individual evidence that has changed or which is in some other way debatable individually. However, she should have, looked at the questioned evidence collectively. Her report is a Miscarriage of Justice, I doubt it would survive a Judicial Review, but on appeal it would be pulled apart - especially when viewed the Bill of Rights. Scott Watson deserves a retrial. A fresh Jury needs to canvass the identification by listening to the witnesses, what they said and what they say now. Also to hear the now turned aside confession, along with the shallowness of the DNA evidence, more as well - not only individually, but most importantly collectively. That is the most important test, 'collectively', that is why Kristy McDonald's report is a Miscarriage of Justice because she completely ignored that point.
ReplyDeleteJust looking at the key evidence Watson was convicted on. First the so-called identification by Guy Wallace, now retracted with Wallace saying the police tricked him. Then the two hairs purported to have come from Scott's tiger blanket, never seen on the boat, but supposedly found in a bag of hairs from the tiger blanket in the ESR lab. In spite of these two long blonde hairs being missed on the first search of predominantly short dark hairs, they miraculously appeared in the second search, but ONLY after sample hairs from Olivia were brought in and examined on the same table as the tiger blanket hairs. There was also an unexplained cut in the bag of the Olivia hairs. Finally, the two jail house informants, one has already admitted to making the whole story up under police pressure, the other, a recidivist thug, was given substantial inducements for his "evidence". A new jury would throw out what's left of the tattered and torn Crown case in five minutes flat. That's why the system fights tooth and nail against a new trial.
ReplyDeleteIn normal circumstances I would not comment on this particular blog but I do have a little knowledge of the case surrounding Scott. The jailhouse snitch B praised by DavisonQC for his hosesty and courage in "coming forward" ocassionally lives in Blenhiem when he is not doing another lagg for domestic violence or dishonesty again.There are two impossiblities no make that three which rule Scott out completely as abductor of the missing pair. The first two concern Mr Wallace a Seaman with then over 10 year experience in both wooden and steel vessels and the first relates to how we feel temperature and it's physiology. Heat and cold are perceived by the manner electrons in our cells reaction to conductors and non conductors. Steel being an excellent conductor means eltectrons pass to stell much faster and just like air leaking out out of a tube valve creates ice so it feels cold to the nerve recepters in the fingers and hands Wood being a very poor conductor eltrons flow is very slow so feels warmer Mr Wallace was far to experience to mistake a wooden vessel with 120cm freeboard with a steel vessel with 60 Cm freeboard that would because of is small size be considerably lighter and less keel hee over under the combined weights of three people boarding at once and wouls loss 20-30cm freeboard. Impossto mistake
ReplyDeleteThe second impossibility relate to human vision which is not well adapted to night vision as we cannot perceive distance well in the dark at all well without known reference points. The ketch was anchored at the end of the second of a four leg journey the firt two at almost 180 degrees to each other and he required direction from his passenger to receach first Tamarck and from there weave through moored and anchored vessels to the Ketch some 300 metres from the Tamarck and Jetty. Give those two complete legs were more or less in opposit direction and Mr Wallace did not know which or how long they took all he knew was his speed it is impossible for him to have known where the ketch was anchored remembering it would need at lesst 10 feet of water because of it deeper keel and lead weight to keep it steady in the water. It was police who claimed with ous any basis in factual terms the ketch was where Blade was none of the nine witnesses who described it placed it there all place it about 300 metres out from the Furneaux jetty and a bit to the left of it, some 100-150 metres from Blade and well out of sight of Scott.
Impossiblity three is the police/prosecutor voyage from a claimed position 5 nautical miles of the entrance to Tory Channel at 4.25pm as written in the inward Ferry log and its [Blade] arrival at Eire Bay six nautical miles inside Tory Channel at 5.00-5.10pm for a total voyage of 11 nautical miles AGAINST the tidal flow ina little over half an hour requiring a real speed of 22 knots [nautical miles per hour]. Blade is a displacemnt hull vessel meaninshe has to displace her weight in the water from infrom of her as she moves forward The Law of Physics has a formula for working the maximum theoritical speed of a Displacement hull vessel which I don't recal in full but has to do with the lenght of the hull at the water line and a couple of other constants. but for Blade the speed is approximately 6.3 knots in perceft conditions the are many things that drop that speed, hull condition wind, power, etc . For Blade to complete the Journey in the time allowssssed she need to made an average speed of 22 knots more than three tims faster than her maximum possible speed. All that removes Scott from the suspect list of one the police had let alone the shoddy identification, lack of finger prints and faked nDNA and mtDNA forensics.