Kiwiblog

Karl du Fresne calls the Media 7 show on the Pacific immigration debate a gang-up on Dom Post Editor Tim Pankhurst.

Steven Price points out to the Ministry of Justice that their site for court decisions of public interest, is missing all the interesting ones. To be fair I think it is up to the Judge to tick the box on whether it should go there, but regardless someone in the Ministry should use their common sense and make sure the EFA judgements and the abortion law one go up asap. The latest EFA is here for those who want it.

JafaPete asks whether people are just voting for change for change’s sake. He agrees with Chris Trotter that the anti-smacking bill may have been a turning point. He also says the EFA may have had an impact on the Government’s unpopularity.

No Right Turn covers the abortion debate and High Court decision. I am not surprised with the High Court ruling – it has been apparent for some decades that we have a de facto abortion on demand regime, despite a legislative framework that reserves it for serious danger to physical or mental health. Now I support abortion (up to a certain date) on demand and even though it would probably be a very heated debate, the proper way to change laws is through public vote or the legislature – not through the back door. The issues were covered on this blog back in March, and in a sign of hope it was a reasonably rational debate with analysis, not just name calling.

Graeme Edgeler covers issues in the Criminal Procedures Bill, and does a summary of each of the dozen or so changed. Excellent.

Colin James is not a blogger (in fact I would call him an anti-blogger!) but his op ed on inflation is worth reading.

An interesting collection of people and groups have been calling for National to support the Government’s Criminal Procedures Bill. At last glance they are:

• The Chief High Court Judge
• DPF!
• The Sensible Sentencing Trust
• Louise Nicholas
• ACT
• NZ Herald

Today’s Herald editorial says:

The National Party subscribes not only to the notion that victims relish their day in court but that every card in the judicial deck should be brought to bear on criminals. Consequently, it has stalled the Criminal Procedure Bill, which would allow pre-trial depositions to be based on written evidence, unless otherwise ordered by a judge. By now, however, National should have had a drastic rethink.

The Criminal Procedure Bill ensures this process will have to be endured just once, unless a judge decides a depositions hearing is necessary. Rarely will this be the case. The use of written evidence should not alter the present situation, in which very few cases do not proceed to trial because insufficient proof is produced at hearings. Yet somehow this does not satisfy the Law Society, which also opposes the legislation. It suggests depositions hearings are important not just for disclosure but for testing witnesses’ evidence and reliability and for confronting defendants with the case against them. This, it suggests, might persuade them to plead guilty.

These objections smack more of self-interest than reality. Essentially, they do little more than proclaim the desirability, in an ideal world, of staging dress rehearsals. This pales into insignificance alongside the many advantages of allowing depositions based on written evidence.

Some lawyers have been making very constructive arguments in the blog debate on the issue, arguing for the value off depositions hearings and how they can lead to changed pleas etc. Despite their useful arguments I have not been convinced because what has been lacking is any hard numbers on what proportion of cases does this apply to. Is it worth having 20 depositions hearings, if only one of them results in someone then pleading guilty? Some more concrete facts and figures would be useful.

The NZ Herald reports that National has offered Labour negotiations on how to progress the stalled Criminal Procedures Bill.

An interesting positioning in which you have the Sensible Sentencing Trust attacking National for opposing the scrapping of most deposition hearings, while National is being defended by lawyers from the Criminal Bar Association.

There was a good debate on the blog yesterday regarding the pros and cons of deposition hearings – including some useful contributions from lawyers at the coal face.

The Government’s Criminal Procedure Bill would allow a Judge to decide whether or not there is evidence for a case to go to trial, based solely on written evidence – unless the Judge specifically calls for a depositions hearing.

National and the Law Society are opposed to this. I think it is actually a very laudable idea and worth supporting.

First of all, how often does a case not go to trial because of lack of proof at a depositions hearing? Almost never. Take for example the Sophie Elliott case – the accused was witnessed stabbing her, and was alone in the room with her. There was never ever even a 0.1% chance the case would not go to trial.

I am very mindful of the impact on victims having to sit through both a depositions hearing and a full trial.

The argument against getting rid of depositions hearings (and I welcome lawyers especially to comment) seems to be that they often lead to the accused them pleading guilty and/or doing a plea deal. I’m not convinced these might not happen anyway as there will still be depositions – just written instead of oral.

I’m also comforted by the fact the Judge could have discretion to call for oral depositions if the case was “borderline”. But it appears to me 95% of the cases are not borderline, will clearly go to trial and spending days in court just traumatises the family further, costs money, takes up scarce court time and does little to advance rather than delay justice.

The Law Society submission on the Bill is here. Page 40 has the arguments on this issue. They seem to be against almost every suggested change, and my suspicion is that the defence lawyers wrote the submission

So I’m puzzled by National’s opposition to the Criminal Procedure Bill. National positions itself as pro-victim and anti-waste. The Press editorial calls for the Bill to be passed, as do I.