Following an independent report into the actions of prosecution lawyers in the case which saw Alan Hall wrongly jailed for nearly two decades, the Solicitor-General has referred the matter to the police.
Details of the report by Nicolette Levy KC have not been released.
But the Solicitor-General, Una Jagose KC, considered the findings and decided the matter should be dealt with by the police.
This is an incredibly rare move but it can’t honestly come as a surprise can it?
Anyone reading the Alan Hall case would be shocked at the blatant attempt to frame him for the crime.
You honestly get the perception after reading the reports that the cops simply rounded up the most vulnerable person near the crime and bullied him into answers that were used to frame him while withholding evidence that proved he didn’t do it.
They fucking knew Alan couldn’t have committed the crime, but the simply framed him anyway because their interrogation techniques are manipulative and have little to do with catching the actual criminal and more to do with simply finding a prosecution.
With the recent litany of miscarriage of justice cases, seeing the inside of a corrupted police interrogation process happening in real time now suggests the Police have learned NOTHING from the mistakes and failures of the past, which is what we have been promised every time one of these miscarriages of justice get exposed.
Look at how the NZ Police bullied false confessions out of people in the Lois Tolley murder case…
Police are refusing to release a review of the controversial investigation into the murder of Upper Hutt woman Lois Tolley, sparking accusations that they are covering up serious misconduct.
Tolley, 30, was shot point-blank in her home in December 2016, in what police described at the time as “an execution-type killing”.
After an extensive investigation, named Operation Archer, three men were eventually charged in 2019 with her murder.
But the charges against all three men, who have name suppression, were dropped by police last year, before the case went to trial, with a judge commenting: “There is presently really no evidence against any of them.”
…It is unacceptable in the extreme for the Police to not release this investigation into what went wrong with this case!
To have gotten prosecution this far advanced without any actual evidence because the police interrogation technique was so corrupted is gasp inducing in its conclusions…
This followed revelations that one of the accused had falsely confessed to the murder, after police used a contentious interviewing technique, the Complex Investigation Phased Engagement Model (CIPEM).
…the whole case became so tainted with the inclusion of jail house narks and unreliable witnesses that there had to be an investigation into how badly Police screwed up…
High Court Justice Simon France said the man, known as X, had been manipulated by the detectives interviewing him, who had broken numerous fundamental rules of interviewing, and X’s “confession” was flawed and not credible.
The case against the other two men collapsed for separate reasons, largely related to the unreliability of key witnesses – including a woman twice charged with perverting the course of justice, and jailhouse informants with numerous convictions for dishonesty, who told conflicting stories.
In a rare move, police subsequently appointed Auckland King’s Counsel and former Crown prosecutor Aaron Perkins to undertake “an independent review of aspects of the police inquiry”.
…the corruption of credible evidence and process was so extreme that there had to be an independent inured into how the fuck it got this far.
Turns out we won’t be allowed to know because the Police are now refusing to release the report…
However, police refused to release the terms of reference for Perkins’ review, making it unclear which parts of the failed investigation were being looked at and whether he was considering why the case collapsed against all three defendants, or just X.
Perkins’ review was completed in August.
But police are now refusing to release the report, or even a summary of its findings, saying it is “confidential and legally privileged”.
…unbelievable!
Yet it manages to get worse!
The defence lawyers of the men falsely set up using jailhouse snitch ‘evidence’ and this weird Complex Investigation Phased Engagement Model (CIPEM) have all complained about tactics used by Police that are absolutely outside the law, like with holding evidence that proves their client innocent!
Wintour said that during the investigation, police deliberately hid material from him until the last minute that suggested his client wasn’t involved in the murder.
Yet it manages to get worse!
The refusal to release the report follows continued efforts by police to withhold material relating to the Lois Tolley investigation and the CIPEM interviewing method.
Stuff has twice been forced to get court judgments in order to obtain access to relevant documents.
It also comes after the retirement of the country’s top investigatorand architect of CIPEM, Detective Superintendent Tom Fitzgerald, earlier this month.
Fitzgerald was closely involved with the interviews of X, but he insisted CIPEM wasn’t to blame for mistakes made by the interviewing detectives and said his retirement had nothing to do with scrutiny of the technique.
So the model being used allows Detectives to lie, bully and manipulate false confessions and the Detective Superintendent who created this model used in the Lois Tolley case, originally claimed the Detectives misused the model and it had nothing to do with him, when it turns out that wasn’t true and that he was actually monitoring the interview from a seperate room and was advising during the interview.
Yet it manages to get worse!
Detective Superintendent Tom Fitzgerald also was responsible for that other great questionable miscarriage of justice case, the murder of Olivia Hope and Ben Smart.
Based on what we currently have in front of us with this case and the recent miscarriages of justice cases of Peter Ellis, Teina Pora, David Lyttle, Mauha Fawcett and Alan Hall you get a terrible feeling that Police are not following the evidence in case, but are merely rounding up the most vulnerable suspects and bullying confessions out of them or twisting the evidence to fit the crime.
What is happening here is a can of very sick and toxic worms are being ripped open while the medias attention is on the petty and vacant.
What is being exposed here is a rotten process that reeks of corruption. I once thought that maybe as much as 5% of the prison population might be innocent, after looking at what has been starkly revealed in this police interrogation process, I think that number might be closer to 30% of the prison population being innocent.
What has been revelled here calls into question fundamental values of justice and Policing in a. democracy. The total lack of wider attention this case and the questions it raises must be addressed.
Of course, in all of this is the whanau of Lois Tolley, whose murder has not been solved and whose family can not rest.
Lois Tolley and her family deserved far better than this debacle.
Our justice system demands higher levels of professionalism than this shambles.
And our Police force should be ashamed.
With Detective Superintendent Tom Fitzgerald suddenly quitting this year from his role with Police, I think an urgent independent review of his previous cases is required and the media should be calling for it.
Allan Hall may be but the beginning of something far, far, far, larger.
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It’s not as if this is the first time. Most have forgotten the Doherty case, where they also snitched up the nearest person, even suppressing evidence that would have proven him innocent.
There is clearly a systemic problem within the force.
I have recently returned to New Zealand after spending several months overseas and I read this.
Andrew, I respond to you because you are spot on. As I have done in the past I spoke to my father’s friend who is a retired Police Officer. He was in the Police when a lot of these corrupt Police practices occurred. Mr Doherty was arrested and charged because the Police asked the little girl if she knew who assaulted her and she said David, which is Mr Doherty’s Christian name. She said this because the person who did do it told her his name was David. Doherty was a neighbour at the time and apparently had some criminal convictions, so the Police decided it was him. He was found guilty on the evidence the cops put up and sentenced to many years in prison but it turned out the DNA on the little girl was not his. It belonged to the person who did commit the crime on her and who was eventually found guilty for doing it. The scary thing is that one of the corrupt cops involved in the investigation that resulted in the arrest of Mr Doherty said that even though the DNA did not match him, he believed it was still Doherty who committed the crime. And this was after the person who did do it was arrested. That just about says it all.
With the Alan Hall matter, yes, the Police are now going to investigate the involvement of the Crown lawyers in this case. They should also investigate the corrupt cops who changed the independent witness’s statement to delete the description of the person the witness saw running away from the crime scene – described as a tall solidly built Maori man, which is not the description of Mr Hall. This did not fit with the cops corrupt narrative because they had decided, wrongly again, that it was Mr Hall so they deliberately changed the statement and it was the original statement of the witness that was not passed on to Mr Hall’s lawyers.
The corrupt cops in the Hall case should also be investigated and charged. I have been told the crime they committed is perverting the course of justice.
From time to time we read about a cop who is charged with an assault or a theft or whatever but the real corruption goes much deeper and the Allan Hall case illustrates that as does all the other cases MB and Andrew have identified.
I really feel for Mr Hall. 19 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. No amount of compensation will make it right and to add insult to his deep injury, his mother, who had been fighting for Mr Hall from the very beginning, died before the Supreme Court decision overturning his conviction.
Do we really expect the cops to properly investigate the Crown lawyers? No. Do we really expect the Police and the IPCA to call to account the corrupt cops who obviously intentionally changed the evidence to get Mr Hall convicted? No.
The IPCA which is made up of retired senior cops will do every thing it can to protect the corrupt cops in this case and if there is evidence of corruption or changing the evidence, they will say something like, “it does not reach the threshold for a criminal prosecution”.
The corruption runs deeper than the cops.
It’s a fucking disgrace. There should have been changes to the system after the Arthur Allan Thomas evidence planting to put checks and balances in place.
(And those cops should still be in prison)
But what do we get – some words of regret. A half apology. And no changes.
That’s the definition of insanity – doing the same thing over and over and being surprised at getting the same results over and over.
It means that anyway without a lot of money or connections could end up behind bars for crimes they never committed.
The police seem to think they are infallible & a big proportion of the population believes them. Having a truly independent way to investigate them would be the only way to find out what is really going on.
The Police always get a conviction of the isolated, socially awkward loner chosen to be the prime suspect.
Ada Your post is going to make a lot of people reading this blog nervous 🙂
This is a lot of detail for readers to consider, but do it for your own education and to be prepared for any interaction with cops, NZ Police culture is bent. It is a long inglorious list of stitch ups, particularly given the historic cold cases of usually young women murdered in NZ that remain unsolved.
Police dishonesty is systemic.
It often starts small, with new recruits being introduced to techniques such as fabricating reasons for traffic stops etc, encouraged to use biased and inflammatory language in reporting and describing interactions with suspects etc.
Promotions depend on “results”.
When my cousin was busted years ago, he was caught with four pounds of weed, when he got to court he was surprised to find he was being charged for three pounds.
Frontline police, from my experience, aren’t normally too bad, just guys doing their jobs, with a slight bit of unconscious bias. The Detectives however… They are normally ambitious, ruthless, deceitful, and morally vacant.
” tactics used by Police that are absolutely outside the law, like with holding evidence that proves their client innocent! ”
So that is another myth perpetuated like we are 100% clean and green and yet we are near the top of the least corrupt countries list.
Well come on Jacinda here is another opportunity to restore confidence in the police and parliament and have a royal commission of inquiry into these corrupt practices.
Or was that not what you had in mind when you promised open and transparent government.
Not surprising Poto got moved on as Minister for the Police but this systemic cover up and corruption has been a deteriorating problem going back to Arthur Allan Thomas and his infamous conviction and detention.
I cant help wonder about many of the more high profile murder cases. Scott Watson comes to mind.
The Scott Watson case will be next…
Good, he was stitched up too, not helped by his first lawyer either. Some skilled journalists have looked into Scott Watson’s conviction and it is clear there was evidence tampering by the plods.
Yes, he’s been waiting a long time already.
He has done an excessive lag for being the drunkest guy at a party..
All we have is learning’s, and it’s now been proven that learning’s are now just a throw away term meaning.
” I ‘ant changing, but there is a nice word for ya that means I may change, to full up the news cycle”
Not surprised at all but it is still shocking nonetheless. I think the crud is rising to the surface so it can be cleansed and healed. I expect we’ll see more and more of all sorts of crud rising as people’s secrets and deceit is revealed the world over. Very interesting times!
Not surprised but completely disgusted. FFS.
Fixing the broken prosecution system is yet another item on the long, long list of things that the Labour government has failed to do which would hugely improve the lives of NZers. You don’t expect National to do anything against their mates but I can’t understand why an allegedly progressive party is happy to rail against injustice when in opposition and do sweet f.a. when they actually get a chance. Mr Goff’s failure to pardon Peter Ellis when he was justice minister for example is a huge stain on the guy’s credibility, such as it is.
the acid test will be how many of the prosecution team are disbarred for life
…or will we go with the usual nz wet bus ticket for the rich?
They’ll prob make someone held accountable but it won’t be fromcthe bottom of the barrel. AKA wet bus ticket
Did the prosecution get exonerating evidence? Or did police keep it from them, too?
sounds like the prosecution team colluded with the police in ‘non-disclosure’
‘fitting up’ and ‘putting verbals on him’ was a regular thing in UK police how many of them moved to NZ and spread the wisdom of their ‘coppers nouse’?
Yeah I recall we imported a lot of UK cops quite a while back
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