Who can be happy with the Bain decision?

David Bain hopefully will be happy with the Callinan decision even if it in parts reads like a comic book for the befuddled.  David has now been found not guilty by a Jury, innocent by one reviewer with a 2nd reviewer sitting on the fence with barb wire stinging his bum in a report that has resulted in a long overdue payout to David Bain.

Each person reading Callinan's report, and his comment in para 64, that he wasn't prepared to say either murder or suicide will find different matters of interest to them.  The overall outcome from my point of view is that David Bain gets paid compensation and more than likely than not

receives other concessions that reconcile with the consistence of him being found, both not guilty by a Jury, and innocent of 5 charges of killing in a review that made the then Minister of Justice puke. Metaphorically, David Bain was asked to pick hot coals from which the outcome would be proof of his guilt or innocence, despite those practices from the middle ages - he showed no scars This is a victory for sanity after a bewildering case that can be classed by 3 things: 'not guilty, innocent, I don't know.'

Even the apparently mortally wounded people who insisted David would not get a cent, still refer to the Binnie report. The report prevails over time and the shabby treatment afforded it from our Government. It will become part of NZ history, this payment if finalised will prevail as one of the largest compo payments in NZ history despite whatever name given to the payment. It will enter folklore that the Crown negotiated their way out of misusing the Binnie report, then protected itself with a settlement offer to avoid having the Callinan report dismembered in the Courts. Pragmatically why would they not want to bail out - should have done so years ago and saved around 50 million that could have been more usefully spent elsewhere rather than vainly trying to bury a Miscarriage of Justice.

The Callinan report is in itself a travesty. Callinan was not empowered to place himself in the role of a Jury. The Privy Council have ruled that it is not the role of Judges or Courts of Appeal to assume the role of a Jury. This report has weakened confidence in the Crown absolutely standing by Juries, but the Jury system will prevail despite Callinan giving himself god like powers to assume what a functioning Jury should have decided. Callinan was getting paid to deliver something that was already tagged as having to satisfy the Government, as Binnie found out - but the Jury were never paid, they took their life experiences into the Jury room and decided in a record time that David was not guilty, 5 times over.

Callinan escaped into the mumbo jumbo of what people said and how people acted. He offered a new and scientifically impossible scenario for Robin's suicide. That it was fluid or moving, no other person has ever suggested this, predictably Callinan himself was never able to transcribe that theory to the known facts of Robin's death - because the theory, much like other matters in his report didn't need to stack up and be defendable in Court because it was to be buried in a financial settlement. He ignored that Cox for the Crown conceded the computer turn on time to have happened when David was seen outside the house. He ignored fresh blood on Robin's trousers and a blood smear found on his hands. No man committing suicide gets blood smeared on his hands in the process, removes his pants away from where he was killed and returns like the walking dead in a zombie show. In fact the Crown's case has been a zombie show for years.

Where Callinan searched into David's past, assuming the role of a Psychiatrist, just as he had assumed the role of  the Jury, he elevated himself above a specialist Psychiatrist who remains a member of the NZ Parole Board, a man who actually met and treated David Bain - something Callinan with his all seeing eye apparently felt as unnecessary. It was also unnecessary for Callinan to investigate an earlier event where Robin was said to have threatened neighbours with a rifle in Wellington, he did not investigate if Robin had ever had a firearms licence and if he did why it was taken off him. Apart from writing disdainfully of Margaret and Laniet Bain in particular he never gave recognition to a letter written by Margaret to an old friend that she was concerned that Robin 'would get a gun and shoot the lot of them (family.) It's doubtful that she wrote that without some reason for doing so. He also treated with disdain evidence that was given under oath of Laniet saying that she her father had an improper sexual relationship with her as a child, noting that the evidence pre-dated the murders by years. But of course he was an expert on all such matters and quite capable of knowing 'best' what he could ignore as he tried to rebuild the Crown case.

Callinan even decided that Weir didn't plant the lens, something Weir was unable to prove in Court himself, and was wholly silent on the fact that Weir hid evidence from the first Jury. Anyone with an open mind could have seen that Weir hid things and found things in a particular order to 'help' a case. Callinan didn't think it was necessary to record that Weir under oath said that he felt hounded before leaving police because other police mocked him as a planter of evidence, poor diddums. Anyone that is except Callinan busy trying to paint over the cracks with long winded observations about what people said concerning matters far beyond the room where Robin shot himself and little of anything observant to the evidence found there. He rehashed evidence to suit his case, something he would never be able to have done in Court under cross examination of the evidence rather than his weak interpretation of what was said. Ultimately however, he did not move the rock of David's innocence, something that the Crown acknowledged with their settlement.