Simon Power has announced that there will be no Commission of Inquiry into the Peter Ellis/Christchurch Creche case. The justification, which many will see as a lame, straw-clutching excuse, is that Ellis has not yet exhausted all his opportunities for legal redress.
A request to hold a Commission of Inquiry into the Peter Ellis case has been declined, mainly because Peter Ellis has not exhausted all his appeal rights, Justice Minister Simon Power announced today.
"After a careful and comprehensive examination of the case, and consultation with my Cabinet colleagues, I have concluded that Mr Ellis' outstanding right to seek leave to appeal to the Privy Council means the request for a Commission of Inquiry should be declined," Mr Power said.
Consideration of the Peter Ellis case was initiated by a request from Dr Don Brash, Katherine Rich and Dr Lynley Hood for a Commission of Inquiry to look into all aspects of the investigation and legal processes relating to the case.
They asked for the Commission of Inquiry to have the power to recommend a pardon for Mr Ellis if it found there had been a miscarriage of justice.
Mr Power today wrote to them to inform them of his decision.
"Mr Ellis' outstanding appeal rights have a significant bearing on the suitability of an inquiry and its ability to achieve finality at this point in the case's history," Mr Power said.
"The justice system, for good reason, is independent of the government. It simply would not be appropriate for the Executive to establish a Commission of Inquiry while Mr Ellis still has remaining appeal rights.
"Other reasons for declining the request include that the Commissions of Inquiry Act is not well designed for an inquiry into the safety of particular criminal convictions, and there is a question about whether it is legally possible to order an inquiry into such convictions under this Act."
Mr Ellis' counsel, Judith Ablett-Kerr QC, has previously signalled an intention to file an application for special leave to appeal to the Privy Council but has not yet done so.
Responses on several different levels are appropriate. Firstly, since the Government wants to see the potential legal remedies exhausted first, we hope that Judith Ablett-Kerr will file with the Privy Council in short order. Let there be no shortage of legal aid. If the gummint can spend up large on self-indulgent bids to broadcast an insignificant sports competition, it certainly has the wherewithal to fund an appeal to the Privy Council.
Secondly, where is Joe Karam when you need him? Ellis needs a high-profile, relentless bulldog in his corner who will simply not let this matter go. Does Joe have a brother?
Thirdly, the matter stinks so high that it is not a question of whether there ought to be a Commission of Inquiry. There simply must. It is only an issue of when. If it needs to be after the full course of opportunity for legal redress has been exhausted, then so be it. But it is essential that the matter is addressed quickly without delay.
If any are not familiar with the case, we recommend Dr Lynley Hood's A City Possessed. We would go as far as to say that it is essential reading for every New Zealand citizen--or, at least those who can read. It provides a sorry tale of a police and justice system which broke down, disastrously--but, to make matters worse, the disaster has been covered up, shorn up, and patched up by a coterie of insiders who are still running interference and trying to protect themselves and their mates.
Only the sanitising effect of Royal Commission daylight on this sorry mess will do. It is essential that it happen, because lessons have to be learned and changes have to be made in the police and judicial system so that, to the best of our ability, something like this will never happen again in this country.
It is here that Simon Power and the Cabinet have defalcated and let the whole country down. If Power was genuinely concerned about the exhaustion of legal remedies and the preservation of the form of separation of the judicial and executive powers and not merely conjuring with them like some kind of shyster, he would have committed to the Commission of Inquiry, but postponed it until the legal avenues had been exhausted, or until Ellis declined to pursue them.
It is the worst, supine, craven, gollumesque decision Power has made to date in his short tenure as Minister of Justice. We fear there will be worse to come. Our country has been weakened today.
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