Otago Daily Times
August 5, 2003

Ellis to petition Privy Council
NZPA

Wellington: Peter Ellis' lawyer, Judith Ablett Kerr, hopes to lodge his petition next week seeking special leave from the Privy Council in London to proceed with an appeal there, she said yesterday.

The announcement follows heightened publicity about Ellis' 1993 conviction for molesting children in his care after millionaire publisher Barry Colman paid more than $20,000 for an advertisement in a Sunday newspaper at the weekend.

The two-page advertisement was of transcripts of children's testimonies, some of which were not played to the jury that convicted Ellis.

Ms Ablett Kerr said Mr Colman's actions were "totally independent" of her and of Ellis.

"Neither of us have had any contact with him either directly or indirectly," she said.

Her role was to progress the Ellis case through the Privy Council.

"I hope to be able to show the Law Lords that there has been a miscarriage of justice in Mr Ellis' case and, amongst other things, that this probably occurred because the jury who were asked to decide Mr Ellis' guilt or innocence was not provided with the whole of the case, and was not warned of the particular dangers that exist in mass allegation cases generally."

Ms Ablett Kerr said she would argue that the appeal process in New Zealand had been overly concerned with the technicalities of the appeal process, rather than the question of whether the convictions were safe.

"The Court of Appeal has repeatedly said that it will not revisit additional factual matters if those facts were known or should have been known to the defence at the time of the trial.

"I argue that what is actually important is the nature and impact of the material that the jury did not hear and if they heard it would it have affected their decision. Why the jury didn't actually hear that evidence is surely of secondary importance."

Earlier yesterday, Ellis' mother, Lesley Ellis, said she was focusing on the Privy Council appeal.

Justice Minister Phil Goff said on Sunday he had had legal advice that previously unpublished testimonies of children in the Ellis case did not justify another inquiry.

The Crown Law Office assured him all tapes and transcripts were available to defence lawyers for cross-examination purposes before the jury convicted Ellis, Mr Goff said.

He sought an opinion from Crown Law after receiving an advance copy of the advertisement late last week. He was told it contained no new evidence.

Although the trial judge ruled against playing transcripts of claims that did not lead to charges against Ellis, the jury was well aware "that some of the material was bizarre and fanciful", Mr Goff said.

He would be happy to refer any genuinely new evidence back to the appeal judges.

Mr Colman said he would put entire interview transcripts from the case, which led to seven years in jail for Ellis, on to a web site this week. - NZPA