There is a dark unacknowledged truth regarding Teina Pora that NZ is refusing to accept.
Beyond the fact that all evidence points to serial rapist Malcolm Rewa, beyond the fact that the interrogation process bordered on Police State, beyond the fact that paid evidence was used to convict, beyond the fact that Pora couldn’t actually identify the house, beyond the fact that Rewa would NEVER take a member of an opposite gang along for a shared rape experience – beyond all that is the physical evidence that the amount of force and violence required to kill Susan Burdett was well beyond the capacity of a 17 year teenager.
What does all of this mean? The Police framed a young brown kid to take the fall and what we now see represents the worst miscarriage of justice ever in NZ history.
We refuse to acknowledge that the Police weren’t just mistaken, they actively framed a kid for a crime they knew he couldn’t have committed, and when the questions started, they refused to admit they were wrong because they knew they were wrong all along.
This has been arse covering from day 1. Our love for punishment which is whipped up by a mainstream media focused more on crime ratings hype than responsible journalism has blinded us to injustice.
Pora happened because we let the Police treat him this way without ever questioning it.
Yes Martyn – there were grave errors that were made it seems as you point out there.
Justice Mahon said something similarly, following the summary out the government testimony given during the official report by Chief Air Accident Inspector Ron Chippendale before the Mt Erebus disaster at the ross dependency at Antarctica in 1979.
“It was an orchestrated Litany of lies” very sad eh?
http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/air-crashes/page-5
Commission of inquiry
Meanwhile, a royal commission of inquiry, headed by High Court Judge Peter Mahon, was appointed to look into the circumstances surrounding the disaster. Judge Mahon’s report, released in 1981, reached a different conclusion. It found that the state-owned airline was primarily to blame in changing the flight plan without telling the crew, with the result that the plane flew towards Mt Erebus instead of down McMurdo Sound. The report stirred up further controversy, particularly in its condemnation of Air New Zealand. Mahon asserted that the airline had intentionally misled the inquiry through an ‘orchestrated litany of lies’.
Do we need another Royal Enquiry?
And Mahon paid dearly as did his family
.
Institutional corruption runs deep, right through to the PM and beyond.
Truth and fact hardly matter.
People even less.
Mahon was a brave man bordering on fearless.
If all cops had to pay the compensation out of their own and not the taxpayer’s pockets and the cops who fitted-up the victims got life sentences for what can only be describer as a crime worse than murder, we might see a change for the better.
True JAC … but thats called accountability and we all now know the cops don’t/won’t/can’t do transparency and accountability, it might/would hurt their image.
I watched the interview with Teina last evening and was wondering whether it is legal for the police to hold someone for 3-4 days and then wake them in the night as many times as they wish to to interrogate him. When are the cops going to be held to account for their arrogant misdemeanors – breaking the law themselves.
He was so well spoken and gentle. Hard to believe he is able to come out of all of that and be the man he is.
On the face of what we are reading, it seems this man was treated appallingly. I have good friends in the cops, and I genuinely want to bring my kids up believing they can trust the justice system in this country, but I’m finding it more and more difficult as the days go by.
So where is the MSM on this now?
Do they dare ask the really hard questions that should be asked?
Nope, don’t rock the boat too much.
He’s out now, the Privy Council spoke justice, and he may even get some compensation.
So at present, although they do not go as far as media in places like the UK, the US and Australia, they relish the chance to individualise the experience, show the “personal” side of Teina, and present him on shows, to “move” people’s emotions, to get more RATINGS.
I wish they would do their damned job and ask the harder questions, not so much to Teina, but to the powers and institutions that were ultimately responsible for this disgusting injustice.
The problem with the NZ Police is not just that they have a natural liking for the authoritarian side of politics, (and that despite the Nanny State epithet – they like the shoot ’em up authoritarians); it’s not just that they also have a liking for securing convictions and will do what is necessary to achieve that; it’s not just that the oversight from the public police watchdogs is somewhere between a rubber stamp and a wet bus-ticket which, in the end relies on the police to effectively investigate themselves (rigorously, we are told – before they find that they have acted with perfect propriety); it is that they appear to be collossally incompetent. David Bain, Mark Lundy, Scott Watson, Ewen Macdonald, Teina Pora etc etc. The only thing these cases have in common is that the police were either baffled, or should have been. They were usually notable for one stuff-up or another.
Maybe we get the police force we deserve.
I guess all that’s left is to arm them.
although i dispute this,beyond all that is the physical evidence that the amount of force and violence required to kill Susan Burdett was well beyond the capacity of a 17 year teenager.Plenty of strong 17 year old’s about,even someone relatively small can cause a lot of damage if they nut out or no what they are doing
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