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Focus on
Police Competence |
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Three teenage girls
convicted of a crime they did not commit want a police apology and plan to
seek compensation. Teangarua (Lucy)
Akatere and Tania Mayze Vini, both aged 17, and McCushla (Krishla) Priscilla
Fuataha, 16, had their joint conviction for aggravated robbery quashed
yesterday by the Court of Appeal in Auckland, after spending seven months in
Mt Eden Women's Prison. The court heard that
after their trial, the Crown's principal witness, a 13-year-old girl,
retracted her evidence by affidavit. The 13-year-old had
claimed she and the three older girls committed the 1999 attack on a 16-year-
old schoolgirl at Three Kings Plaza, in Mt Roskill. The victim was thumped,
kicked and had her head banged against a tree stump before being cut with
scissors and robbed of $10. The officer in charge
of their case, former New Zealand test cricket opening batsman Detective
Constable Trevor Franklin, did not accept the girls' denials. They were convicted
after a High Court jury trial in August last year. At the time of the
attack, Akatere was aged 15 and the other two were 14. Fuataha, who was said
to have wielded the weapon, was sentenced to two years' jail. The others
received 18 months. Yesterday, Justices
Robertson, Gault and Salmon overturned the conviction and told the girls they
had the court's sympathy for the injustice. Police did not oppose the ruling.
Justice Gault said that
the "investigation and trial system failed in this case". The wrongful conviction
"raises questions of conduct by the police which is a serious matter and
must be properly investigated," he said. The girls had
"been subjected to the demeaning experience of a public trial and the
constant rejection of their protestations of innocence". The girls told the
Herald that their first week in jail was terrifying because they were
separated, surrounded by older women and constantly scared. "I just hid in my
room," Akatere said. They wore prison-issue
track pants and shirts and were told to work in the laundry, washing
prisoners' clothes from the nearby men's division. At first, Vini said,
other prisoners said: "Why don't you just admit you did it?" But
soon accepted the girls' innocence and took them under their wing. "We had lots of
prison mothers and aunties." But seeing their
children behind bars and the public humiliation was heartbreaking for their
families. None of the parents
doubted their daughters' innocence: "From my heart I know, they never do
it," Vini's mother, Kaiei Timi, said. "I've had my
family laughed at with people making jokes about her being in jail. I've had
to lift my head up high and ignore it," Fuataha's mother, Sue Johansson,
said. The girls said they
were happy with the ruling but "we just want the police to say
sorry". Their lawyer, Gary
Gotlieb, said the system had failed the girls and their families "all
the way along the line". Police had tunnel
vision and often believed they had the offender and then found the facts to
fit the crime, he said. The battle to clear the
girls' name began when Vini's father, Vini Kavi, went to Mr Gotlieb earlier
this year because he could not bear his daughter being in jail. "I knew my daughter
never committed that crime." Mr Gotlieb engaged
private investigator and former police superintendent Bryan Rowe. Mr Rowe interviewed the
Crown's principal witness who formally admitted for the first time that she
had lied. She told him she was pressured by police into confessing. He also uncovered a
series of oversights and blunders by police which he described as bordering
on "criminal offences". As a result of Mr
Rowe's inquiries an appeal was lodged, Auckland City district commander
Superintendent Howard Broad agreed to a police reinvestigation and the girls
were bailed in April. Yesterday the police
spokesman for the reinvestigation, Detective Senior Sergeant Stuart
Allsop-Smith, said police accepted that they failed to identify a
"compelling" witness who did not tell the truth. Detective Constable
Franklin said he could not comment and said all questions should be referred
to the officers running the police investigation. |
