Several journalists over the years reported the flaws in the case against Alan Hall, whose conviction for the murder of Arthur Easton was finally quashed this week - 37 years after he was first arrested. Does this show the power of the media to expose wrongful convictions - or the limits?
Alan Hall's brothers Greg, Geoff and Robert speak outside the Supreme Court. Photo: RNZ
Alan Hall was 23 when he was first arrested for the murder of Arthur Easton. This week he was cleared by the Supreme Court at the age of 60.
Wednesday's news wasn't a surprise for those who knew about his case and the problems with it.
Two days earlier the Crown admitted Hall shouldn't have been convicted because Police had hidden vital evidence from the defence team before his trial. The Crown had already admitted back in April in submissions to the Queen against Alan Russell Hall this was “a trial gone wrong.”
“I've never seen as clear cut a case of a miscarriage of justice in my career,” Hall’s lawyer Nick Chisnall told reporters outside the court.
“It's hard to get a case over the line where a miscarriage of justice is so obvious,” he told The Listener magazine last month.
Yet the family had lawyers on the case for years and, more recently, investigator Tim McKinnell, a former police inspector and an expert in wrongful convictions. Investigative journalist Phil Taylor was writing about problems with the case more than a decade ago for the New Zealand Herald.
In 2011 Phil Taylor reported on a key piece of evidence - a statement from a passing motorist, parts of which would have cast doubt on his involvement if they hadn't been withheld from the defence.
This was also aired in the Grove Road podcast back in 2018 - the first ever podcast series produced by Newshub.
Photo: screenshot / MediaWorks Grove Road
The eight-part series not only put new evidence - and flaws about the existing evidence - back into the spotlight, it also drew Tim McKinnell to the case.
But when making the podcast Mike Wesley Smith also credited the crucial record keeping and campaigning stamina of Alan Hall’s family.
“There does seem to be a pattern of some New Zealand's worst miscarriages of justice involving an unlikely team of journalists that kind of work alongside the defendant or the legal team. And it's often that kind of joint pressure that is what's necessary to get these big, long standing, problematic convictions overturned,” Mike Wesley-Smith told Mediawatch.
“I'm really proud of the work that the team I was part of did on Alan’s case - including producer producer Maggie Wicks and editor Asher Bastion,” he said.
But with so many journalists and advocates on the case cover so many years, why did it take so long to overturn the conviction?
“One of the most enduring mysteries about Alan's case is how obvious the problem with it was. It has never been okay for a prosecutor or defence lawyer to just unilaterally change a witness's statement, because they don't believe a certain material aspect is reliable,” he said.
“I think that's why so many journalists were drawn to the case. The prosecutors, the Police, the Ministry of Justice who administer our prerogative of mercy application - they all consume media. They have communications teams who are constantly looking at what the media is reporting. But it doesn't seem that any of (them) thought that might be something that they should act on,” he said.
“I was really flummoxed as to why it didn't animate those institutions in the way it did for journalists and other observers,” he said.
Investigative reporter Mike White has reported several wrongful conviction cases and written guidelines for journalists and editors.
He’s warned reporting details of complex cases risks amplifying doubts about the possibility of wrongful conviction.
“I have a lot of respect for Mike - and Phil Taylor, whose reporting provided a really useful template for journalists like me to approach these types of cases. You obviously want to as much as possible stick to that middle lane of impartial journalism, and not become an unquestioning advocate for one side or the other,” Wesley-Smith said.
“For me, the safest way was to focus on the fairness of Alan’s trial, which is something that should be a shared concern for both the prosecution and the defence and the judiciary. In all my reporting, I wanted to make that clear that I wasn't there at the behest Alan or his family. In fact, in the podcast I reported on evidence that pointed towards him too,” he said.
We do have a Criminal Cases Review Commission, partly because of previous miscarriages of justice such as the conviction of Teina Pora.
It has had a lot of applications since it was set up, and Mike Wesley-Smith told Mediawatch media should follow cases through their process and keep people up-to-date with long-running cases.
“The Criminal Cases Review Commission was a fantastic addition to the New Zealand justice system. In England, they've had one for about 25 or 30 years. But I will forever be of the view that there will always be a place for journalists in that watchdog capacity of our justice system. Because how however many \institutional checks you put in place, I just don't think we'll ever capture all of those cases that need to be kind of brought to light,” he said.
“There's something about the freedom with which a journalist - given enough time by their bosses - has to simply pursue the truth wherever that truth may take them,” he said.
