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Otago Daily Times
Tuesday,
23-December 1997
The second trial - in media
By Paul Fitzharris
Paul Fitzharris is Commander, Southern Region, of the New Zealand
Police.
Like it or loathe it, these days people convicted of crimes, such as David
Bain, Peter Ellis, and Rex Haig can expect two trials - one in the court and
the other, later, in the media.
The
police have to accept that high-profile cases will travel this path more and
more, although this year an unprecedented number came in for relitigation.
In nearly all these cases, they had been previously scrutinised at a
depositions hearing, in the High Court, in the Court of Appeal, and in some
cases in the Privy Council. The convictions have stood.
Enter the campaigners with lawyers and reporters in tow, exposing so-called
new facts.
With Bain, the retrial started with a Sunday night current affairs programme,
and continued in best-selling books, newspaper and magazine features,
talkback festivals, live television debates, and top-billing news items.
Comparisons were quickly drawn with Arthur Allan Thomas, who was wheeled on
to the Holmes show to say that an injustice had been done. The public
responded, and television fax machines spat out condemnation after
condemnation of the Dunedin police, who were guilty as charged, they said.
Many of our citizens seemed to have forgotten that a real trial, in a real
court, took place two years before, in which a jury heard the evidence in
both sides, and unanimously found Bain guilty. The court proceedings took
weeks, and generated many pages of evidence.
In this new trial, we could only sit and watch the ease with which public
opinion was manipulated and shaped. Selectively, piece by piece, so-called
errors in evidence (almost all canvassed at the trial itself) were shunted
forward and given the spotlight, only to be replaced by a new revelation some
weeks or months later.
If people were asked then what was the single thing they believed the
prosecution did wrong in the Bain case, I'm sure they would have each given a
different answer.
The police largely kept out of it, hard though it was, because the
allegations centred on us.
Unlike in a court of law, we had no guarantees of fairness.
Instead, we waited for an official complaint about the handling of the Bain
case. None was forthcoming, but the allegations went on.
I could better understand this if all reporting was responsible and well
researched, and there was no skewing of the facts to suit a particular angle,
journalist's campaign or book-marketing strategy; or if I saw that moral and legal
caution was always exercised before police officers and experts were named
and vilified.
In the Bain case, four police officers and a doctor had the finger pointed at
them for their part in bringing David Bain to trial.
These people did painstaking work, gathered evidence, endured the horror of
the scene of the crime, and dealt with the victims. These are people who do
not seek the limelight, and endure scenes and utterances that would drive
other people to despair.
They wore the allegations for more than a year, and in the end were
vindicated by a joint Police Complaints Authority and police inquiry.
Journalists and Mr (Joe ) Karam should now ask themselves how much good and
truth came from all this? Was it all worth it?
At least the Ellis case is following the right course - an application to the
Governor-General.
I await the much-touted approach in the Bain case.
This is not peculiar to New Zealand. The English nanny case in the United
States is another example. I can just about guarantee that nearly all her
supporters in England did not have the intimate knowledge of the case the
officers involved did. I wonder how the media contributed to the outcome.
This may sound like shooting the messenger, but let's face it; the buck stops
with the media. It has the ultimate responsibility to ensure people get the
truth. The days of merely reporting events are gone, and while New Zealand
needs investigative reporting, many of us at the centre of these media
investigations want greater care taken.
As in the Bain case, the police may eventually be vindicated, but some
members of the public will still continue to believe that these officers did
something wrong, no matter how many reviews clear their names.
Above all, let's not forget that while Bain, Ellis, and others may be
conversation pieces to many, there are real New Zealand families which are
forced to relive these tragedies. Spare a thought for them.
Who knows where these campaigns will lead?
I ask that if people feel issues need to be raised, they should be
expeditiously put before our justice system instead of through the media
blender.
I also ask our news establishments to, please, be careful when you re-examine
cases years later, when many people have forgotten what happened at the
trial.
When you tackle these issues, the information you show the public is not
subject to the same procedures that would be applied in a courtroom, where
all the details are minutely examined even before they are allowed as
evidence.
The last thing we need are more victims.
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