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Focus on
Police Competence |
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The police have cleared
themselves of wrongdoing over a botch-up that left three young girls jailed
for a crime they did not commit. A heavily-censored
police report into the wrongful conviction of Lucy Akatere, then 15, Tania
Vini, 14, and McCushla Fuataha, 14, shows officers involved in the case were
"counselled". Police told the Herald
on Sunday the officers were never found guilty of misconduct or malpractice
and continued to work in criminal investigation. That was despite a
succession of errors, including failing to check the girls' alibis and
hanging the entire case on the word of a 13-year-old later found to be lying.
It is the latest blow
for the young women who this week gave up fighting the Government for more
compensation. The trio served eight months in prison and were unable to
finish school after being convicted of the gang attack and robbery of a
teenage girl in Three Kings in August 1999. They were acquitted in
2001, when the witness admitted she had lied, and the three were proven to
have been nowhere near the scene. The Government has
offered them about $135,000 each - compensation awarded under tough new
guidelines that restrict payouts for wrongful convictions. But Queens Counsel
Rodney Harrison has predicted the trio will be the only people to have
compensation calculated under the rules. He argued,
unsuccessfully, in the High Court that the cabinet rules were unlawful and
unworkable. But he said pressure was mounting to have them re-written in the
wake of a review of miscarriages of justice which found they were more
prevalent than previously thought. The girls were awarded
far less compensation than they would have under the previous system which
awarded close to $900,000 to David Dougherty, who had been wrongly convicted
of rape. Former police
superintendent Bryan Rowe, who conducted the private investigation which
proved the girls' innocence, said it was one of the worst miscarriages of
justice he had ever encountered. Justice Minister Mark
Burton confirmed the cabinet rules regarding compensation were to be
re-worded soon. But he defended the $135,000 awarded to each girl as
"fair" and refused to exercise his discretion to offer them an additional
ex gratia payment. |
