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The Christchurch Civic
Creche Case |
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Sunday Star Times The Queen's Counsel who led the
Crown prosecution against Scott Watson has broken his silence, saying he has
no doubt the right man is behind bars for the murders of Olivia Hope and Ben
Smart 10 years ago this week. In an article to be published in
The Listener yesterday, Paul Davison labels Auckland journalist Keith
Hunter's Trial by Trickery, a book-length interrogation of the police case
against Watson, as "nonsense", and criticises recent media coverage
which questions Watson's convictions as "superficial in the extreme and
somewhat sensationalist". "[It] panders to that level
of journalism which seems to attract and excite attention without really
having covered the detail and undertaken any sort of analysis at all,"
he said. Deputy police commissioner Rob
Pope, who led the Operation Tam inquiry into the disappearance of Hope, 17,
and Smart, 20, from a New Year's Eve function at Endeavour Inlet in the
Marlborough Sounds, has also spoken out, saying he has seen nothing to make
him doubt the convictions. In the article, Davison defended
the so-called "two-trip theory" the hypothesis that, after Watson
was taken to his boat by water-taxi at about 2am that night, he returned to
the celebrations at Furneaux Lodge and was later taken by water-taxi driver
Guy Wallace to his boat, along with Hope and Smart, about 4am. Critics of the Crown case point
out there were no witnesses to Watson having returned to shore after
water-taxi driver Donald Anderson recalled having taken him to his boat at
about 2am. But Davison said how Watson got
there was not crucial because there was evidence he had been ashore at about
3-3.30am. He also suggested Wallace's
descriptions of the boat he had dropped Smart and Hope at had developed over
time. Wallace said it was a double-masted ketch a boat the Crown has insisted
did not exist, and which he had confused in the dark with Watson's
single-masted sloop. In his first statements, he wrote
the word ketch with a question mark. Davison said it was significant that
Watson himself never described seeing a ketch despite his boat being moored
almost exactly where Wallace said he dropped the trio. Montages made of photographs taken
that day show no ketch in the area identified by Wallace, but do show
Watson's sloop. When combined with the evidence of
Watson's sexually aggressive behaviour on the night, his earlier statements
that he wanted to kill, and his subsequent actions in cleaning and changing
the appearance of his boat, the case was compelling, he said. Pope told The Listener: "The
inquiry gathered a massive amount of information and through a process of
exclusion the police case was that Scott Watson was the only person
responsible." The Listener is owned by APN,
publisher of the Herald on Sunday, which has questioned the validity of
Watson's conviction, placing the two publications from the same stable on
opposite sides of the fence. Meanwhile, Watson has gained
another high-profile supporter in Dunedin author Lynley Hood, who wrote a
book about the convictions of former creche worker Peter Ellis on child sex
allegations. Hood said yesterday the case
raised concerns the justice system had failed by convicting Watson without
the charges being proven beyond reasonable doubt. "When that happens,
everybody's at risk. Anyone can be accused, and when police stitch up the
case without regard to reliable evidence and due process, then nobody's
safe." |
