The Christchurch Civic Creche Case
	News Reports Index
	1999 July-Dec
	The Dominion July 9 1999 Ellis appeal ends with plea for `liberal approach' from judges The Court of Appeal hearing into the 1993 convictions for child abuse of Peter Ellis ended yesterday with a plea that the court use wide discretion in deciding what evidence it would consider admissible. Ellis's counsel, Judith Ablett Kerr, urged the five-judge appeal bench to take a "liberal approach". "Because it's important that justice be seen to be done and that's what this court is really about, about justice. "I understand the rules, that (evidence before the court) can get out of hand . . . but this is a highly unusual case." She urged the judges to go even beyond the six grounds that Governor-General Sir Michael Hardie Boys had given for allowing the second appeal. There was a "seventh ground, justice itself", she said. Closing the hearing, court president Sir Ivor Richardson said the judges would take "a considerable time" to carefully consider the material, and would deliver a judgment "in due course". Concluding the Crown's case, Simon France argued that the risk of contamination of children's evidence was known and investigated. He said the context in which the material had been gathered was appreciated at trial, and it could be demonstrated that its significance had not been underestimated. The Crown accepted that inappropriate questioning by parents had taken place, but "it's not a perfect world". Regarding the research put forward by the defence as providing new insights into mass allegations, he said: "There must be something new and significantly new, one would expect, before one revisits jury decisions, and a decision of the Court of Appeal on the same issue." The jury had been aware of children's evidence, including of trapdoors and coffins, "all those things". He said that a juror associated through her partner with a complainant child's mother had not talked improperly, and that evidence of a witness to a juror's proclaiming her belief in Ellis's guilt had been rebutted. He said that any Crown failure to disclose material was regretted, but that none of such material had been significant.