Hopefully A Light At the End of a Long, Dark Tunnel

Update on Peter Ellis Case

Update #1:

Reporter/commentator Martin van Beynen  has written a comprehensive summary of the trial of Peter Ellis, and its aftermath.  It has been published in Stuff.  Ellis, readers will recall, is suffering from terminal cancer.  He has made one more, final appeal to the Supreme Court to have his conviction for the sexual abuse of children overturned.  The Supreme Court has ruled that it will accept the appeal and will re-consider the case.  This is a huge step forward.

Van Beynen's piece is long but a must-read.  We commend it to our readers.

Update #2: 

Blogger and commentator David Farrar has written a commentary on Van Beynen's piece, entitled "More On Ellis Case".  It is a much shorter read, but the theme is the same: a gross miscarriage of justice has occurred in the case of Peter Ellis.  Farrar concludes: 

I’m hopeful but not optimistic about the Supreme Court. An appellate is restricted in what it can do. It can’t just substitute its opinion. It has to find grounds for a miscarriage which haven’t already been considered. Hopefully they will.

We Must Set the Record Straight

Peter Ellis--An Unsafe Conviction

At Contra Celsum we have previously called people's attention to what appears to be one of the worst violations of criminal due process and justice in New Zealand.  It has been dubbed the Christchurch Creche Case.  It involved the trial and conviction of one Peter Ellis. 

Ellis is now dying of incurable cancer.  His days upon earth are coming to an end.  He wants to be vindicated before he dies.  It should have happened years ago--but it is always hard for a justice system which has so many reputations to protect to admit a gross miscarriage of justice.  For our part, we became convinced of the innocence of Ellis upon reading Lynley Hood's A City Possessed--a book demanding to be read.

During the trial of Ellis events were witnessed by a young court reporter, Martin van Beynen.  Now, much older, Beynen recounts the Ellis trial(s).

 Peter Ellis, seen here in 2003, is making a last-ditch attempt to clear his name, and Martin van Beynen believes that should happen.

Ellis worked as a childcare worker at the Christchurch Civic Creche.

The S-Files. Simon Power, Minister of Injustice

It's More Rotten Than We Thought

The Contra Celsum S-Award committee met yesterday and voted unanimously to bestow and S-Award upon Simon Power, Minister of Justice.

Citation:

Yesterday we posted on the craven and cowardly decision by the Minister of Justice, Simon Power refusing to set up a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Peter Ellis travesty of justice.


Power attempted to justify his denial of a petition which had called for just such an inquiry--a petition which had been signed by three former prime ministers, half a dozen law professors, and several judges, as well as members of the current Cabinet--by hiding behind legal forms. Ellis still had the right of appeal to the Privy Council; it would be inappropriate to have a Commission of Inquiry while some legal avenues for redress were still open to him blah, blah, blah.

It took all of a couple of minutes yesterday for Ellis to confirm that an appeal to the Privy Council was impossible because he has no money to fund such a petition to the Council. So the hollow sham of Power's decision has been exposed for what it is--the crafty manoeuvring of a shyster. While claiming to respect justice and its processes, he knows full well that justice is now never going to be served. It is the cynical ploy of a man who has become a living parody of his office.

For the rest of his term, Simon Power should be given the sobriquet of Minister of Injustice; history should record his shameful derogation of office.

Simon Power, Minister of Justice: S-Award Class II for official actions which are Shameful, Short-sighted, Stupefied, and Scandalous.

Something Rotting in Denmark

A Shyster Hiding Behind Forms

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.