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The
Christchurch Civic Creche Case |
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Justice doesn't come
cheap. However, the State carries a responsibility to take all reasonable
steps to get it right. To that end, another
spoke in the creaking wheel of this country's justice system has been proposed.
At what cost is not yet clear. Retired High Court
judge Sir Thomas Thorp suggests an independent authority be set up to
identify miscarriages of justice. As part of a two-year
inquiry, Sir Thomas studied 53 recent claims of flawed convictions. Of these,
he decided only a handful were "plainly without merit". Worryingly, he says up
to 20 people might be wrongly imprisoned in New Zealand. Though this is a
tiny percentage of our prison population which approaches 7000, as our
incarceration rate grows so too does the chance of more unsafe convictions,
even if advances in DNA science should help counter this. Not all of the cases on
the miscarriage list will be Arthur Allan Thomas-type causes celebre. Mr
Thomas received $950,000 compensation and a pardon in 1979 after more than
nine years behind bars for murder. But if up to 20 people are suspected of
being wrongly behind bars, then investigating their cases should get the
utmost priority. An independent
authority with separate investigative and other resources, able to act with
suitable speed, seems an appropriate way to do this. Such bodies already
exist in England and Scotland, where sufficient numbers of unsafe convictions
have been exposed to justify their existence. A filter to prevent
inappropriate or vexatious cases from clogging up the works might be
required. After all, many of this country's prison population already claim
their innocence to anyone who will listen. The proposal would be expensive. However, it is surely
better to bear the costs of catching flawed justice early than to have
individuals languishing in prison wrongly. Justice must not only be seen to
be done, it must also be done right. |
