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Conclusions and
Recommendations 1. To this date the Petitioner has argued
for a pardon followed by an inquiry rather than a quashing of his convictions
by the Court. That preference was indicated in his first petition, but is put
much more emphatically in the second, which asserts that "The Criminal
Justice System is Unable to Accommodate Your Petitioner's Case", and the
Court of Appeal an inappropriate body to determine it. That petition also
contends that financial and resource constraints have prevented the
Petitioner from doing more than raise issues for further consideration, and
argues that the work needed to take those issues further can only be done by
a Commission of Inquiry with wide terms of reference To promote that claim it
was sufficient, and perhaps more effective, to give a higher priority to
accumulating matters for investigation than to establishing their individual
or collective significance. It may also have appeared to the Petitioner and
his advisers that, while his claim for a pardon without any further
proceedings remains at large, action by them which facilitates a hearing by
the Court could derogate from and prejudice that claim. Certainly, whether or
not for that reason, the Petitioner has not kept up with the timetable
settled by the Court of Appeal to ensure that a hearing of the reference
would commence on 31 May 1999. That slippage, in combination with the
proposed widening of the reference, makes further substantial delay a
certainty unless steps are taken now to avoid that result. 2. Although other issues may attain major
significance those of greatest concern on the material so far provided, "the
central issues", are - ·
The
claims of defective interviewing techniques and of failure to assess or
minimise the risk of "contamination" of the children's evidence
(see part 4.2); and ·
The
claim that the exclusion of evidence of allegations by complainant children
which were not the subject of charges before the jury deprived it of evidence
necessary to a proper assessment of the children's reliability (see part
4.4). Not only are those clearly "central"
issues, they are also those where an evidentiary basis has been most nearly
attained. They are not simple issues. But if the opinions of Dr Parsonson
(which are the cornerstone of these complaints) and the Ceci/Wood claim that
creche/kindergarten cases involve special hazards, prove to have general
support, it would in my view be difficult to argue against the existence of a
serious doubt about the safety of the
Petitioner's convictions. If that view is correct, the shortest route to a
soundly based resolution of the Petitioner's position is likely to be by
evaluating those opinions. Part 4.2 discusses how that might be done. It
suggests that if the advisers to the Petitioner and the Crown co-operate in
obtaining and exchanging opinions from suitably qualified persons the matter
should, if not resolved by agreement, be sufficiently advanced to put before
the Court on 3 1 May 3. Part
6.7 considers the difficulties involved in proceeding in the near future with
a hearing of all the issues proposed to be referred, and suggests
consideration of a hearing limited in the first instance to a few central
issues. That procedure would be more likely to succeed if the parties
agreed upon the issues to be considered and went back to the Court with a
programme for its consideration. 4. As
this opinion was being signed off I received from the Ministry copies of two
faxes from the Petitioner's advisers - ·
Forwarding
an opinion from Dr Lamb supporting the Parsonson opinion, and offering to
supply other opinions when they are received subject to financial
constraints; and ·
Asking
that I obtain additional records from the police about the conduct and
emotional stability of two of the officers involved in the creche inquiry. As noted in Part 2.8 my brief is to give an
opinion on the papers, not to conduct an investigation. But that apart, the
character and emotional health of the investigating officers must be of less
significance than the quality of the evidence they collected. The further
opinion now received supports the case for giving priority of attention to
the central issues rather than extending the scope of the inquiry. 5. Matters of Public Interest
Incidentally Arising |
