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I would like to ask that Derek
Round apologise for and retract his article in last week's paper. While I found much of the piece
barely intelligible, his clumsy inference that my late father Mr Justice Neil
Williamson acted in anything but a fair manner in the trials of Peter Ellis
and David Bain is grossly unfair and patently untrue. His attempts to imply Dad was
biased because he was a former Crown prosecutor and a committed Catholic are
insulting. In the recent Privy Council decision on the Bain case, the law
lords noted that the "miscarriage involves no reflection on the trial
judge, and in the present case (Bain's) counsel expressly disavowed any
criticism of Williamson J". For Mr Round to then try and draw
a connection with the Parker-Hulme murder trial of the 1950s based on the
fact that Dad joined the law firm involved in that case soon after its
conclusion is absurd. As well as apologising to your
readers for such an appallingly poor piece of writing from a former senior
journalist, Mr Round should express regret for insulting the memory of my
late father, who was renowned as a fair and wise legal practitioner. Derek Round replies: There was no suggestion in my
article that the late Justice Williamson acted in anything but a fair manner
in the trials of Peter Ellis and David Bain. Greg Williamson properly notes the
Law Lords said the miscarriage of justice in the Bain case involved no
reflection on the trial judge and that Bain's counsel expressly disavowed any
criticism of Justice Williamson. My original article described Justice
Williamson as a "respected" judge but the word
"respected" was dropped for space reasons. The article was about the question
of Crown prosecutors becoming judges. The original article noted that the
late Justices Peter Mahon and Sir Clinton Roper had preceded Justice
Williamson as Crown prosecutors in Christchurch, and Justice Pankhurst had
also been Crown prosecutor, but this was omitted in editing for space
reasons. Justice Mahon's predecessor as
Christchurch Crown prosecutor was the late Alan Brown who prosecuted in the
Parker-Hulme case. That was the only relevance of the Parker-Hulme trial with
which Justice Williamson had no connection. |
