Police officers found not guilty of manslaughter after man's death in custody

A jury has found three Taranaki police officers not guilty of the manslaughter of a man who died in custody.

Allen Ball died at Hāwera police station in the early hours of 1 June, 2019.

The 55-year-old, who had been arrested following a family harm incident, died of an overdose of codeine, tramadol and alcohol.

The three officers can now be named as Sergeant Sandra Shaw, Constable Craig Longworth and Constable Corey Waite.

An Australian-born dairy farmer, who an older sister described a loving family man, Ball had been arrested about 11.30pm on 31 May after police had been called to a family harm incident on Hastings Road.

He was intoxicated and lost consciousness in the police vehicle on the way to Hāwera station. It took six people to carry him to a holding cell just before midnight - a scene caught on CCTV which would be played repeatedly during the trial.

Ball had lived in New Zealand for 30 years - eight of those in Taranaki - was discovered unresponsive on the floor of holding cell one some two and a half hours later and declared dead just before 3am.

The charges were laid after a year-long internal police investigation and only after the Crown Prosecution service had sought advice of a Queens Counsel and an independent legal expert.

The Crown had argued the officers had failed in their duty of care to Ball, he would have survived with medical help, and they were culpable for his death.

The defence said the officers made mistakes but that did not amount to gross negligence and they were not criminally liable.

It's only the second manslaughter case involving police staff.

The jury returned its verdict in under three hours.

The case against three officers

Crown prosecutor Cherie Clarke had argued the officers who handled the arrest failed in their duty of care of Ball to such an extent they contributed to his death.

She said the officers knew that he had threatened suicide, was heavily intoxicated, did not react to pain compliance testing and could not be woken in the car or once placed in the recovery position in the holding cell.

She said at no time after Ball arrived at the police station - at 11.46pm on 31 May until 1 June at 2.26am when one of the accused said: "get the ambo" - was any medical assistance sought.

"At that point of time it was already too late, the Crown says. Mr Ball at 2.36am had stopped breathing."

Subsequent attempts at CPR were fruitless and he was pronounced dead on the floor of cell one at 2.53am.

"The Crown says if Mr Ball had been provided with medical care at any time between 11.46pm when he arrived at the Hāwera Police Station and sometime before 2am that morning, he would have survived what was in essence a drug and alcohol overdose."

The jury heard from about 30 Crown witnesses.

The defence

Susan Hughes QC, opened the defence case and told the jury they had to decide if the officers breached their duty of care for Ball. If so, was that a major departure from the standard of care expected and could the behaviour be justifiably considered criminal?

Hughes told the jury members they already knew how Ball died.

"Suicide. He deliberately and covertly ingested a very large quantity of (painkillers) codeine and tramadol and denied it."

Hughes asked the jury to focus on the question of why the officers did not get Ball medical help. She said they thought Ball was drunk and sleeping off a bender, a view that was honestly held.

"They wrongly believed he was asleep. But that mistake does not amount to a breach of their duty of care to Mr Ball and does not amount to a major departure of the duty owed to him and doesn't merit criminal sanction."

The defence team presented no evidence and called no witnesses.

The evidence

Senior Sergeant Kyle Davie, who was response manager for Hāwera in 2019 and the officers' commanding officer, told the jury taking a heavily intoxicated person to hospital was an option open to the accused.

Under cross examination he conceded that letting drunks sleep it off was also not an uncommon practice.

The jury also watched almost two hours of CCTV footage - from Ball's arrival at the Hāwera station, with police struggling to get him out of the vehicle, through to when police realised he was not breathing.

Constable Ben Patterson, who helped get Ball into the station, said he had not been concerned about Ball when he was found unresponsive.

"He was asleep and had drunk an unknown amount of alcohol at that point. I just thought he was sleeping."

Entries made into the police computer system which prompts police responses to different situations were also a focus of the trial.

Ball, who was understood to have drunk a litre of bourbon, was entered into the system as having "extreme" alcohol consumption.

"If the detainee has been affected by alcohol to an extreme measure consideration should be made whether hospitalisation is required," Detective Sergeant Byron Reid, who had analysed the defendants' entries into the system, told the court.

Reid said that entering "unresponsive" would prompt an alert for immediate hospitalisation. The Crown argued two of the defendants had deliberately ignored such alerts.

On the final day of Crown evidence, the court heard from two expert witnesses.

Emergency medicine specialist Dr Paul Quigley told the jury an ambulance could have saved Ball's life, had one been called.

"A combination of decreased breathing rate plus very, very small pupils means opiate poisoning and they would have the ability to give a drug called Naloxone, which reverses opiates and also up his breathing and may even wake him somewhat."

Crown prosecutor Cherie Clarke asked Dr Quigley how long that would take to work.

"It's on the end of a needle. It's basically as you give it."

Dr Quigley also said Ball, in the CCTV footage, had appeared "deeply unconscious" and unresponsive from the time he arrived at the Hāwera Police Station, comments that mirrored those of an earlier expert witness.

Former paramedic André Slierendrecht, who is the managing director of a police first aid training provider, observed Ball made no deliberate movements and was unresponsive in the video.