Why aren’t we all talking about New Zealand Police Interview tactics?
How many times do we get told by the cops after a deplorable interview process that borders on bullying a confession out of desperate and simple people, that Police promise to change procedure?
We had it after Police planted evidence in the Arthur Allan Thomas case, we had it after the using false memory evidence from children Christchurch Creche satanic case, we had it after Teina Pora who was interviewed for 5 days in a row, we had it with taking photos illegally from Māori teenagers on the street and last week we had a Detective Superintendent who was the architect of a controversial new police interrogation program called the Complex Investigation Phased Engagement Model, caught out lying about his level of involvement in detectives using his model for a cse that was eventually kicked out of court because it was manipulating people into making confessions!
Today we hear about Alan Hall, whose conviction for murder, of which he has served 19 years in jail, is about to be quashed because Police lied to the Jury and hid crucial evidnce from the defence and altered witness statements to entrap him despite Alan Hall having Autism Spectrum Disorder.
Man who spent 19 years in jail for murder was wrongfully convicted, Crown admits
On the eve of a crucial Supreme Court hearing, the Crown has admitted Auckland man Alan Hall, who spent nearly two decades in prison for murder, shouldn’t have been convicted, because police deliberately hid vital evidence from the jury.
In an extraordinary submission to the Supreme Court, Crown Law, which oversees criminal prosecutions in New Zealand, has conceded “a substantial miscarriage of justice occurred in Mr Hall’s case, and that his convictions should be quashed”.
Hall was 23 when police targeted him for murdering Auckland father of five Arthur Easton in 1985.
He has spent 19 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit!
Look, you can’t have a Police interview process that generates false or illegal confessions! If all we are trying to do is set people up and convict them of crimes we force them to confess to, that’s not a fucking legal process, that’s a gulag! How have the NZ Police managed to get away with this with so little media attention?
If the mainstream media are finished crucifying Karmel Santamaria could they focus on this?
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Couldn’t agree more. I’m very skeptical about some of the more high profile claims for exoneration (I could definitely do Lundy’s drive back when he did it) but there is no question that Police, not necessarily maliciously, will tend to lock onto certain people. People who don’t know their rights, who can’t pay a lawyer, don’t have anyone who could pay for a lawyer, or who wouldn’t even think to refuse to talking to police without a lawyer, or who are mentally abnormal.
I’ve done some dumb things where I have no doubt that if I wasn’t born into an intact middle class family where I knew my rights and had people to reach out to, I could have well have faced some pretty serious civil and criminal liabilities.
While I would argue these differences in outcomes are largely driven by class, they certainly have disparate impact on Maori and Pacific Islanders.
Perhaps, before worrying about letting 16 year olds vote to legalize weed, we should be worrying about teaching them to not talk their way into prison? Hell, while they’re there, maybe some information about how ruinous student loans can be, and any/all means that those from lower income brackets can take to save a bit on that damage.
So is this INCOMPETENCE and and a lack of Training and Expereince or is this CORRUPTION and an abuse of power?
Was Hall set up as a PATSY to protect someone else? which would imply Corruption or were the police simply incompetent, lazy and biased in their investigation – cherry picking evidence and engaging in confirmation bias to build a case? There is an age old investigative rule which says never turn a SUSPECT into a WITNESS.
Behavioural sciences give us insights into how Criminals behave when caught out – in many cases criminals will LIE, they will deny, they will blame shift and psychologically project and often play the VICTIM or become a good “witness” for police. In a story reviewed by RG there were concerns that police never authenticated anything, never checked motive of the complaints received, never checked the mental health or medication status of complainants ( their new Victims / Witnesses) never considered Gender differences and harm caused (psychological v Physical) and then police engaged in cherry picking and confirmation bias to help build a case – acting on lies by the very offenders who were now playing the VICTIM/WITNESS. Planting false evidence by ommission is still planting evidence to fit someone up. So is this total and absolute Incompetence and Inexperience or do we have a serious concern with corruption and abuses of power ? This then becomes the most important question?
DARVO it would appear is not being taught in police college – and neither are the differences between how harm – psychological and physical is a Gender matter where women and men harm by different methods – the most basic of interview criteria so you dont get played as the FOOL.
I’ll never forget the chilling phrase of a lawyer friend, around the time of the Thomas case; “The law must have its victim.” Suffice it to say that for each new police commissioner who solemnly swore each time a fraudulent police process has been exposed, that a new broom was sweeping clean, not one turned up to pay their respects at the funeral of Pat booth, the man who proved they’d planted the shell case that convicted Arthur Thomas. But they were all there at the funeral of the officer responsible for that travesty of justice.
Thanks Malcolm, your comparison of the two funerals provides a worthwhile anecdote to file away.
Will the cops who withheld evidence and deliberately altered a statement which resulted in the conviction of Allan Hall, who is obviously innocent, ever be held to account? Answer – no. And yes MB why doesn’t the right wing media focus on this sort of corruption and criminal behaviour by the cops? Is it because they are part of the establishment which will look after them.
The cops attitude is that they do no wrong and even if they are proved to have done wrong, like here, they still say the have not done wrong. To prove my point look at the response from Police Assistant Commissioner Sue Schwalger in the following article revealing further shocking conduct by the cops including a senior cop coming on all heavy with the person being interviewed for the murder of Mallory Manning in Christchurch – https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/126900367/i-reckon-we-just-fing-lie-cops-caught-planning-to-deceive-during-murder-investigation
“In a brief written statement, Assistant Commissioner Lauano Sue Schwalger pointed out Justice Dunningham ruled police interviews with Fawcett were not oppressive, and Fawcett’s FASD diagnosis was considered important in his statements being deemed unreliable and inadmissible.
“The existence of FADS (sic) was not known to police at the time of interviews nor considered by the court in 2013.”
Rephrased – “the Police have done no wrong and even though the media and the man’s lawyers have shown these officers to have done wrong, they have done no wrong”.
And the cops wonder why the public approval rating has dropped.
And we have the arrogance to criticise other countries for less than perfect legal/justice systems.
As someone with aspergers who had never heard of Alan Hall, I can only wish a curse on the houses of those responsible.
May it be so.
Don’t forget the Doherty case, where DNA evidence exonerated him after he’d served years in prison and it transpired that police hid evidence that would have proven his innocence at the time of trial.
Even in the best societies there are bad people and some will inevitably get into the justice system, but what rankles is that there are never any charges laid against the CP or individual officers for, say, perjury. Even a decent fine, job loss or demotion would be a powerful warning to others with similar intentions.
We should be looking wider than the Police interview tactics we also need to look at the crown prosecutors role as some of them are FUCKEN useless, don’t give a shit and they don’t do their job. I have seen it first hand in court. And our police are complicit in doing plea bargains at the detriment of the victims and their whanau.
Then we have the parole system another area needing a bomb up it.
Blah! Blah! Blah!
this is nothing new
Nothing will change because those
who are the gatekeepers don’t
want change.