David Tamihere case collapses after corrupt NZ Police practice fumbles miscarriage of justice
After 37 years, the justice system has just delivered one of its most damning admissions yet. The David Tamihere case has been overturned by the Supreme Court of New Zealand, with findings that the original trial relied in part on evidence “concocted to secure convictions”. That’s not a technicality — that’s a collapse of confidence in how justice was done.
Wow.
Supreme Court quashes David Tamihere’s decades-old convictions for murdering Swedish tourists
David Tamihere’s convictions for murdering the two Swedish tourists have been quashed, 37 years after the couple disappeared in the Coromandel bush.
A conviction built on evidence that should never have stood
The upset decision from the Supreme Court today finds that Tamihere’s High Court trial in 1990 was unfair, and based partly on evidence that was “concocted to secure convictions”.
It also says that the Crown’s later theories of what happened to Sven Urban Höglin and Heidi Birgitta Paakkonen when they went missing almost four decades ago have never been tested in front of a jury.
While the Supreme Court has allowed Tamihere’s appeal, overturning his two murder convictions, it has also ordered a retrial.
NZ Herald
Jesus wept!
What a shocking blow to the establishment and real mana to the Supreme Court.
I’ve watched this case over the years and huge parts of it never seemed legitimate or fair.
The use of prison narks to manufacture testimony never sat well with me and always looked like an enormous corruption of process rather than legitimate evidence.
When the body of Sven Urban Höglin was found so far away from the Police version of events, it made the case against Tamihere a farce that demanded a retrial.
How many more cases look like this?
Based on what we currently have in front of us with this case and the recent miscarriages of justice cases of Peter Ellis, David Dougherty, 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.
That’s my honest assessment of what has happened here to Tamihere. Police were desperate — and the Supreme Court has now made clear the case against Tamihere was fundamentally flawed.
Every single time the NZ Police get caught framing people for crimes, they tell us they won’t ever frame people for crimes ever again.
And yet we’re told to trust the system every time.
The most egregious recent example was the unbelievable Stephen Stone case!
Stephen Stone acquitted after 25 years in jail for murder of Deane Fuller-Sandys
I challenge any Kiwi to read the Stephen Stone case and not come to the immediate conclusion that the NZ cops framed these people for a crime they didn’t commit!
Stephen Stone, Gail Maney, Colin Maney and Mark Henriksen were framed by the Police!
Stephen Stone was released after spending 25 years behind bars for a crime that increasingly looks like it was based on nothing more than the NZ Police threatening 4 witnesses into making false statements on which 4 people were sent to prison…
A man who has spent 25 years in prison for the murder of west Auckland tyre-fitter Deane Fuller-Sandys has been granted bail.Stephen Stone was imprisoned in 1999 for the murder, as well as the rape and murder of Leah Stephens.Earlier this month, Stone’s conviction was quashed by the Court of Appeal, alongside those of Gail Maney, Colin Maney and Mark Henriksen.The court ordered a retrial for Stone.
I cannot understand how Scott Watson is still in jail or how he got convicted in the first place on such flimsy evidence.