26022025 photo DAVID UNWIN / THE POST Restore Passenger Rail protestors appear in Wellington District Court. Defendants from left Te Wehi Heketoro Ratana, 29, Andrew Gerald Sutherland, 64, Michael Reginald Apathy, 44, Thomas Brydone Taptiklis, 44. Photo: The Post/David Unwin
Charges have been dropped for three Passenger Rail protesters facing a retrial in Wellington District Court.
Four members of the group were charged with endangering transport, related to climate protests that brought rush-hour traffic to a halt in Wellington, in October 2022.
On 10 March, jurors found Andrew Sutherland not guilty, but after more than three days of deliberations they were unable to reach a verdict for Michael Apathy, Thomas Taptiklis and Te Wehi Ratana.
The jury was dismissed and a retrial ordered.
But on Tuesday the Crown confirmed it would not be pursuing the case and asked that the charges be withdrawn.
All four defendants faced charges of endangering transport - which carried a maximum 14-year jail term - related to three protests in October 2022 that called for passenger rail services to be restored.
Protest banners were strung above rush-hour traffic on Wellington's State Highway 1 at the mouth of the Mount Victoria Tunnel on 18 October, and from gantries above the motorway at Bolton Street on 10 October and Johnsonville on 27 October.
Apathy, Ratana, and Sutherland pleaded not guilty to one charge, while Taptiklis pleaded not guilty to two charges.
Police told the jury the danger posed by the protesters forced them to stop traffic.
The jury also heard uncontested evidence from two climate scientists, who described the possible impacts from climate change if emissions were not drastically reduced.
Andrew Gerald Sutherland, 64. Photo: The Post/David Unwin
In his summary of the case, Judge Stephen Harrop instructed jurors to put aside their sympathies and weigh whether the climate change protests were reasonable.
He said while New Zealand protected the right to free speech, that did not grant protesters immunity from prosecution.
The Crown submitted that there was no social utility in the protesters' actions and no reasonable person would "dangle themselves deliberately, like a circus act" above rush-hour traffic.
Prosecutors said the protests were objectively reckless and therefore criminal.
The defence said the existential threat of the climate crisis meant that their actions were justified.
The defence counsel maintained that any danger posed by the protesters' actions was far outweighed by the social utility of drawing people's attention to the political inaction on climate change.
The trial began on 26 February.
During deliberations the jury sought direction from the judge on two matters and asked to re-watch social media footage of one of the protests.
On March 10 Sutherland was found not guilty and on 11 March a hung jury was dismissed.
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