GUEST BLOG: Willie Jackson – Teina Pora – the victim of a racist justice system
Today Teina Pora’s lawyers return to Court to argue for his compensation payment for wrongful imprisonment to be inflation adjusted.
The Cabinet had made a petty and spiteful decision to not make his compensation inflation adjusted and that simply manages to add insult to injustice.
We, as a community and society based on law and the values of justice and mercy owe Teina Pora because Pora was the victim of a racist justice system and we as New Zealanders need to acknowledge that.
The physical violence of the murder of Susan Burdett always suggested Pora couldn’t have been the killer.
All evidence pointed to Malcolm Rewa as the rapist and murderer and with Pora coming from another gang, Rewa would never have allowed Pora to come along and participate.
The interrogation process where Pora was questioned endlessly for hours on end was so questionable that it was changed after Pora’s conviction.
Paid evidence from questionable sources was used to convict him.
Pora was unable to identify the house the murder took place in.
There were alarm bells ringing right from day one when the Police identified Pora as a suspect and every step of the way Police refused to admit they had the wrong person.
In 2015 I interviewed Police Commissioner Mike Bush who admitted on Radio Waatea that the NZ Police had an ‘unconscious bias’ towards Maori. Teina Pora’s real crime was being young, brown and easy to manipulate.
Pora isn’t the only innocent person to serve time in our prisons, but a mix of institutional arrogance and ‘unconscious bias’ towards Maori mean we have no idea how many are wrongly rotting inside our Prisons.
The first step of any new Government in September should be to establish a new process for wrongly convicted New Zealanders to have their cases reviewed because to allow a justice system that is biased against one group to continue without new checks and balances means we will have learned nothing from the Teina Pora miscarriage of justice.
Pora deserves better and New Zealand as a country deserves better.
Was it not recommended to the Government that any compensation paid, should be inflation adjusted, yet the Government chose not to? Or did they just choose to ignore the advice given to them?
The one thing I have learnt from right wing Governments, they will do what the hell they please, regardless of any recommendations made to them across any given portfolio. As we have witnessed recently, even the P.M. sees himself above the law, as he and his cohorts scuttled to the gutter.
Its racism for sure.
But I also wonder if, from both the Public and the Governments point of view, there is an element of both prejudice and refusal to acknowledge the difficulties faced by our fellow citizens who suffer from foetal alcohol spectrum disorder.
I wonder how many people in prison, living rough, living lives of chronic dysfunction, are suffering from this medical condition.
Imagine the seismic shift we would have as society if we recognised that fact and offered people treatment and help rather than punishment for a recognised disability.
But I guess the alcohol lobby won’t let that idea take hold anytime soon.
If English Catholic beliefs were as strong on alcohol prohibition as it is with Cannabis prohibition, there would be no such thing as foetal alcohol spectrum disorder.
My observation from the brief T.V. news clip I saw last night would be that the judge was appalled that Pora did not receive an inflation adjusted settlement. We can only hope this judge does what is right and fair.
I think if its a choice between eternal damnation and keeping the Alcohol lobby happy even English knows what side his breads buttered on.
And to be fair, prohibition never solved anything.
Anyone remember the Tamahere Case and the Missing Swedes ?
Remember, there is no corruption in NZ cause there is no one independent to report it to
Go on, try it, report corruption to your boss etc, see where it gets you… i dare you
Will lead to a constructive dismissal for some reason or reasons and then you have to think to yourself is it really worth the hassle ?
Will lead to a constructive dismissal for some reason or reasons and then you have to think to yourself is it really worth the hassle ?
The claim that NZ is one of the least corrupt always amuses me….especially when I see those TI reports.
The difference here is that it’s nore covert.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s immigration consultants having an interest in recruitment/labour supply companies or acting as PTE agents, or crony appointments ( check out Frank’s ‘crony watch’, or things like ‘preferred supplier status’ for govt. Dept purchasing, or Ministerial whispers in various ears.
I actually prefer the more overtly corrupt-strangely they seem a lot more honest in that they make no pretense.
The corruption index asks business leaders whether their impression is that NZ is corrupt.
“The Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) ranks countries “by their perceived levels of corruption, as determined by expert assessments and opinion surveys.””
Remind people of this when they bring up our “high” scoring. It is an indication of how well corruption manages the media, if nothing else.
So the same Cabinet that worked out Teina Pora should get a few dollars for each of those days locked up was the same one that gave a Saudi business man $11 million?
There has been corruption in NZ ever since the arrival of the Wakefield Brothers in the 1830’s and the establishment of the New Zealand Company, people are extremely naive here in New Zealand