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Usenet;
Newsgroup nz.soc.queer
March 1 2000
Re: The credible Peter Ellis?
by David McLoughlin.
David
McLoughlin wrote
The point about the Civic case is that the judge prevented, time and time
again, facts relevant to from being put before the jury. The Court of Appeal
twice found nothing wrong with this.
Adele wrote:
I don't think there is just *one point * about that particular case. I
suspect there were quite a few points
of interest about the case.
Yes there were and I have canvassed them all extensively in the past. I have
written several articles on this case and produced an Assignment documentary
on it.
My point here was, and I believe it is THE point, is that the judge and the
Crown prosecutor acted seemingly in concert to prevent all those other
points, let alone 99.5pc of the evidence, from getting anywhere near the
jury. The Court of Appeal backed this travesty of "justice." The
fact that the jury foreman knew both the prosecutor and the Crown's expert
witness (and was the marriage celebrant of the prosecutor) makes it even
worse.
If all or even some of the other "points" had been allowed to be
raised with the jury, the case might have been laughed out of court. But the
judge adamantly rejected every application by the defence to present evidence
favourable to the defence. The judge also knew of the jury foreman's
relationship with the prosecutor and did nothing about it,
The Court of Appeal has twice disallowed an appeal, saying that only those
matters put before the jury could be subject to appeal. The fact that the
defence was stopped from presenting the remaining 99.5pc of the evidence was
"irrelevant," according to the learned "justices,"
because that evidence was not part of the case before the court.
Just one example, in one instance, a child interrogated several times on
video by specialist services said he had been abused, by a relative he named.
But the interviewers ignored this and kept asking "what did Peter do to
you?" Finally, the kid repeated the same tale of abuse regarding the
relative, but said Ellis did it. Ellis was thus charged with this. The judge
refused to allow the defence to play the several videotapes where the kid
accused the relative, on the grounds the relative had not been charged, and
only evidence relating to Ellis was admissable. The Court of Appeal backed
this disgraceful example of disingenuous reasoning.
Heads you win, tails I lose. Catch 22.
Whatever you wish to call it, Ellis was railroaded, chiefly by a
moralistic Catholic judge who openly despised him because he was gay and made
no secret of that disgust, emphasising over and over to the jury in his
summing up the "depraved" sexual activities Ellis had supposedly
indulged in and then laying into Ellis in a most vicious way at the
sentencing.
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