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Focus on
Police Competence |
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Three young women
wrongly jailed for a crime they did not commit have failed in a High Court
bid for more Government compensation. Lucy Akatere, Tania
Vini and McCushla Fuataha each served seven months after being falsely
convicted of the aggravated robbery of a 16-year-old girl in Three Kings
shopping mall in August 1999. Ms Vini and Ms Fuataha
were 14 at the time and Ms Akatere was 15. In October 2001 the
Court of Appeal quashed the trio's convictions, offering them the court's
sympathy after being "let down by the system". "Fatal
weaknesses" were discovered in the Crown case, following an
investigation by Ms Vini's father, leading to the Crown inviting the Court of
Appeal to quash the girls' convictions outright. Two years later, in
March 2003, in a report prepared for the Government, Kirsty McDonald, QC,
recommended compensation of $135,000 for Ms Vini and Ms Akatere and $137,500
for Ms Fuataha and a Government statement confirming their innocence. Later that month the
Cabinet Policy Committee agreed to make an ex gratia payment in terms of the
recommendation, on condition that the girls take no further legal action
against the Crown. However, in dismissing
their action in a reserved judgment, Justice Patrick Keane said that the
girls did not accept this offer. "They had been
advised that Cabinet criteria entitled them to significantly more. Their
advice was that the Cabinet had misapplied its own criteria." The girls' lawyers
maintained in the High Court at Auckland that the Government's criteria and
guidelines were irrational, unprincipled, unworkable, arbitrary and unfair. However, the
Attorney-General argued that the method used to calculate compensation
complied with the guidelines. Furthermore the
Attorney-General's lawyers argued, the court had no ability to review the
criteria as the Crown was under no duty to make any payment, as payments were
made ex gratia. Justice Keane agreed
with the Attorney-General, ruling that the Government criteria and guidelines
"mesh coherently and they compensate for all the heads of loss
identified against the aggravating and mitigating factors listed". "They are not
unworkable, they are not arbitrary and they are not unfair. Nor can Cabinet's
decision be assailed on the basis that Ms McDonald misapplied the criteria.
She did not. She applied the criteria accurately," Justice Keane said. He ruled that the
girls' case must fail. The judge added that
declaratory relief would have been of doubtful use to the claimants because
"ultimately it is for the Cabinet to say on what terms it will make
compensatory payments that it has no duty to make, and to which the claimants
have no enforceable right". If the Attorney-General
intended seeking costs against the girls, he would have to file a memorandum
by the end of the month, the judge said. |
