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Allegations
of Abuse in Institutions |
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A case involving a
Porirua teenager might have turned out differently if the jury had watched a
video, writes Deborah Morris. Quietly spoken Porirua
teenager Maululu Vaoese does not come across as a typical troublemaker. He
avoids direct eye contact and at times it is hard to hear him speak. The 19-year-old has a
dignity that is hard to ignore when you consider what he went through in the
past two years, beaten by a police officer and then vilified in court by
defence lawyers as a criminal. Maululu started his
night on October 25, 2003, like a lot of teenagers. It was a Saturday night
of a long weekend and he and cousin Lusama Eli took a train from Porirua to
Wellington. They, like hundreds of others, went to Manners Mall. They ate at
McDonald's then got a taxi up to Eli's place in Brooklyn. They spent most of the
night there. They did a little drinking and at one point there was a fight
between Eli and someone else at the house. Both teenagers were asked to leave
and they did, heading back down the hill into town in the early hours of
October 26. Maululu has told each court in which he was giving evidence that
they intended heading back to the train station to go back to Porirua. In Mitchell St the pair
hit the first snag. Off-duty police officer Paul Lindsay saw two men walking
down a path near his house. In court he could not identify the pair as
Maululu and Eli. Shortly after he heard
a crash and, when he went outside to his car, parked on the side of the road,
he saw two people in it. Eli has admitted
breaking in, using a rock. Maululu has always said he got into the car on the
passenger side to ask what the hell his cousin thought he was doing and get
him out. The off-duty officer
grabbed Maululu but in the confusion, Maululu stumbled and fell. The
teenagers ran off in opposite directions. The officer called for help. Down the road Maululu
was stopped by police. One of them cannot be identified but the other was
Leonard Ibbotson, usually called Len. Maululu was asked about
the break-in and about a bag he was supposedly carrying. He denied having any
bag. He claimed Constable A
hit him in the face and stomach and made threats that a police dog would be
set on him if he did not cooperate. He said he was called a "lying
nigger". Constable A has had all
charges against him dismissed. Maululu was put in a
police car and driven further into Brooklyn to look for the non-existent bag.
He said he tried to help, believing he should or the dog would be set on him.
Later, in the car, he
alleges Ibbotson hit him. Ibbotson was later acquitted of this. Back at Wellington
central police station, Maululu was beaten by Ibbotson in an interview room. There have been four
separate court hearings into the incident. In the first, Maululu had the
charge of unlawfully getting into a car against him proved. He was discharged
without conviction and without further penalty. The second saw Ibbotson
convicted of assault with intent to injure for the incident in the interview
room. Ibbotson took Maululu
back to Wellington Central, where he put him in a video interview room. Wellington District
Court judge Barry Lovegrove – the only judge to have heard all the crown
evidence – was played a 10-minute tape over and over. Each time it was played
it became clearer that Ibbotson, who was 14 months out of police college,
lost control of the interview with a teenager then lost control of himself,
smacking Maululu with an open hand, called a palm strike by police, and
knocking him to the floor. In the tape, the
usually quiet Maululu comes across as intelligent, strong, sure of himself
and full of frustration at how he has been treated. He repeatedly asked for
his lawyer and, when Ibbotson did not comply, he turned the table on the
constable, making the allegations of assault and insulting language earlier
in Brooklyn. Those who have seen the
tape say Ibbotson was out-matched by the teenager and it must have been
humiliating and horrifying to hear the allegations being recorded. They also
agree the tape, and the questioning, should have been stopped when Maululu
asked to speak to a lawyer. Ibbotson's attack was
seen by Senior Sergeant Jimmy Lee, who entered the interview room, finding
Maululu on the floor in a foetal position. Maululu was taken away. At the hearing,
Ibbotson finally admitted striking Maululu. He has since resigned from the
police. Judge Lovegrove, who
had the advantage of seeing the tape and hearing Maululu give evidence,
believed the youth. He called him a softly spoken, clean-cut schoolboy caught
up in compromising events. However, at a jury
trial of both police on charges of assaulting Maululu in Brooklyn earlier
that night, the Crown was hamstrung by a pre-trial Court of Appeal judgment
that prevented them using the Ibbotson evidence against the other constable. Courts sometimes keep
evidence from a jury, even though it is relevant, if it is thought it could
make the jury irrationally prejudiced against the defendant and if that
prejudice could outweigh the light the evidence might shed on the case. The Court of Appeal
said the beating in the police station happened two hours after the events on
the street and might have been triggered only by the way Maululu turned the
tables at the interview. But the jury was likely to jump to the conclusion
that, if he was beaten up in the interview room, his earlier assault
allegations must be right too. That reasoning, the court said, was unfair to
Ibbotson, so the evidence should be excluded. Criminal law expert and
Victoria University associate professor Elisabeth McDonald said the decision
must be hard for a lay person to fathom when the defence was calling Maululu
a liar and the court had acknowledged that the beating in the station was
relevant to Maululu's honesty. "It plainly showed
Maululu was less likely to be lying about the earlier assaults, yet the jury
was not allowed to know about it," she said. "It is also hard
to understand the judges' finding that the process of arrest through to the
interview is not part of one set of circumstances, which was the other reason
the court gave for excluding the evidence." As a result, the jury
did not hear everything. It was never shown the videotape of the allegations
Maululu made in the interview room. And it never heard medical evidence of
the broken jaw Maululu sustained during his run-in with the police. The ruling frustrated
the Crown trying to present a complete picture of its case and allowed the
defence to use strategies that worked in its favour. The most obvious was to
paint Maululu as a thief. He was questioned about being in trouble with
police before and about lying to the police on the night. The jury heard many
defence questions about a bag Maululu never actually had, making them think
he had something to hide. In fact, he had told a
previous hearing that Eli had the bag and he had the strap. The defence was able to
put to the jury that there was no medical evidence because the Court of
Appeal ruling kept the Crown from using it. The defence lawyers
were able to capitalise on the Court of Appeal judgment. They were able to
make Maululu come across as a budding criminal out on the town, drunk and
looking for trouble. Maululu was unable to remember many of the minor events
of the night. If the medical evidence
had been available, the jury would have heard that Maululu may have had
concussion that could have affected his recall of events. The jurors may have
made the right decision for the evidence they heard ... but they were kept in
the dark and never heard the full story. It would be interesting to know if
their decision would change had they heard everything. |
