I wasn't in New Zealand when the Bain family was killed or when David Bain was convicted, and I know too little of the details of the case to form an opinion myself on that verdict ... but with last night's decision from the Privy Council, it's a strong reminder that if you do want to get justice in New Zealand that you need to be as single-minded as a Joe Karam -- a single-mindedness that goes almost beyond reason and into an obsession -- an obsession that last night was triumphantly vindicated!But is it a justice system worthy of the name when it takes such an obsession -- an obsession reportedly costing former All Black Joe Karam (right) in the order of $4-5 million to receive it on Bain's behalf -- the same sort of single-minded devotion that drove someone like Karam to be the outstanding All Black full back that he was? As Karam said this morning, his dozen years of single-minded devotion to justice is not something he'd recommend to others, but without others like Karam with obsessions like these, where and how and when do people like David Bain get a fair hearing?
And what does this decision from the Privy Councillors say about the Clark Government's decision to abandon our link with the Privy Council and introduce instead a local Supreme Court, a Court on which now sits two members of the Court of Appeal whose decision the Privy Council so derisorily dismissed. Speaking then I said,
the Privy Council isn't just a medieval relic leftover from the dusty days when common law still protected people's rights (though it is that) it also gives New Zealanders who are eager for justice access to some of the world's best legal minds. Further, having the Privy Council as our supreme court means there is a clear separation of powers between New Zealand's legislators and its supreme court - in this case 12,500km of ocean worth of separation!It's not too late too reopen that debate.
... But surely, I hear you cry, [government]-appointed judges wouldn't just be tame poodles, rolling over whenever called to? Well, they don't have to. Despite being overrun with lawyers in shiny suits, the talent pool from which judges are chosen in New Zealand is remarkably small - everybody knows everybody else, and legislators and judiciary are often separated by no more than a restaurant table and a bottle of chardonnay.
UPDATE: Stephen Franks launches a salvo in that debate. "The Privy Council decision," he says, "is a catastrophic affirmation of the size of our loss when we abandoned our right to neutral international referees."
Joe Karam called this morning for the resignation of the two Supreme Court judges who refused an appeal while on the Court of Appeal. That kind of erosion of confidence in the quality of justice in New Zealand was inevitable from the moment the “indigenisers”, led by Hon Margaret Wilson, got their hands on the tiller...Read Franks' full piece here.
The right of appeal to neutral outsiders was a priceless assurance of integrity for our otherwise unhealthily small hot house legal cabal...
Our legal profession thinks its privileges are justified by their championing of the the rule of law, of the rights of the citizen against the state. Some individual lawyers do that... [b]ut to me as an MP their advocacy as a ‘profession’ was marked by cowardly group think, often self interested, and suffusing political correctness.
This last Privy Council case is a sad measure of our exposure to that group think.
14 comments:
Joe Karam is a Hero!
No only has he championed an innocent man, he has exposed the corruption of the NZ police and Legal system.
He has exposed the evil of Clark and Wilson’s megalomania.
Who believes Bain would have got this judgment from the Supreme Court of Aotearoa?
I’d put money on it he would have failed!
This must be remembered at election time!
Personally I believe Scott Watson has been shafted exactly the same way, but what hope does he have of getting an appeal through this same system that blindly maintained itself re David Bain ????
He has had his right to appeal to the privy Council removed by Clark and Wilson!
As a Libertarian If we had a new constitution that the privy council could then be abandoned, once our Legal system came to grips with the new concepts of justice and the rights of the individual.
Something that is foreign to the current system that happily imposes racist laws and socialist/ politically correct oppressions such as Dean Risi...Kelly Brownes and the Nico Nazis!
Travesty upon Travesty is how I describe our current system of bigoty and oppression!
You cant even defend yourself!
Karam is no better than some boofhead clown shouting at the ref with a pie in one hand and a stubby in the other at a footy game.
He got it wrong and because he has no intelligence to speak of, he kept getting it wrong.
Bain did it. Neither he nor Karam are heroes.
I was sitting on the Jury, I would have convicted David Bain on the evidence presented. David had no explanation at all to the Police about the scratch marks on his face. The younger brother showed sign of struggle with the Killer, and the evidence was all in his room. The father never had any marks on his body when examined by the coroner. So, did the younger brother struggle with God or he struggled with a human being that had scratches on his face? I will leave that to Tim to answer that question, perhaps a bit of a help from God almighty that might appear from the sky and tell us (NZ citizens) of what really happened, then.
Correction to my last message, which should read like:
If I was sitting on the jury,...
Here is a comment from DPF, that he had made it as a separate thread. And let the overwhelming Physical evidence against David speak for the truth. It can be found here.
The evidence of David Bain's guilt is so compelling the case is open and shut. There is no room for doubt. The Privy Council decision does not question this, it simply says a jury should also have had before it all the various red herrings Karam has thrown in over the years.
In no particular order:
- Stephen put up a strong fight with his killer, who shot him through the hand and tried to throttle him before inflicting the fatal shot. Many fibres from David's jersey were under Stephen's fingernails. David had unexplainable bruises and scratches consistent with being in a fight. Robin did not and no fibres from Robin's clothes were under Stephen's fingernails.
- It is inconceivable that Robin could have killed his wife and three of his children, getting into a prolonged fight with Stephen in the process, without emptying a full overnight bladder first (or in the fight). Also Robin was a frail, sick elderly man unlikely to be able to overcome the strapping Stephen in a fierce fight. Also, Margaret, Arawa, Laniet and Stephen died a couple of hours before Robin, yet Karam expects us to believe he did not go to the toilet between killing them around 5am and himself around 7pm.
- David's bloody fingerprints were on light switches and walls, and his bloody handprint was on the side of the washing machine where his bloody clothes were washed, as well as on the detergent packet. Robin's bloody prints were nowhere.
- David's gloves were used by the killer, presumably to mask the killer's prints. Soaked in blood, the gloves were found in the debris
of the fight in Stephen's room. Why would Robin use David's gloves when he had his own and why would he use gloves anyway if he intended to kill himself?
- Bloody footprints made by a sock found in the washing machine were found throughout the house. While these could have been made by either Robin or David, if either were the killer, Robin had no blood anywhere on him (other than his fatal head wound) or his clothes or socks, nor was the room-to-room pattern of the prints consistent with how Robin would have entered the house from the caravan he slept in outside, but it was consistent with the killer having come from inside the house.
- While Robin had no blood on him (other than the fatal headwound) or his clothes, David's clothes were soaked in blood consistent with the blood that would have gushed from the victims when being shot at close range. He also had their blood on his skin under his clothes, and on his under-wear, which had soaked through the outer clothes before he took them off to wash and which he did not notice.
- Robin was shot in the top of the head as he kneeled, consistent with him having just come into the house from the caravan to pray as he normally did at 7am. While it is theoretically possible to have held the rifle up at an awkward angle to commit suicide by shooting it into the top of one's head with the trigger finger hand far outstretched, there are much easier and more definite ways to do it, eg put the barrel into one's mouth aimed at the roof of the mouth. Robin's fatal wound is consistent with being shot by David standing over him and not with suicide.
- Robin's prints were not on the gun at all, meaning he could not have used it to kill himself.
- David's prints were on the gun in a position consistent with where he would have held it while the killer wiped it clean of prints in the blood splattered all over it by the killings (fine wiped fresh blood was all over the gun). Karam claims David's prints on the gun came from a hunting expedition. Even if that were so, Robin could not have wiped the gun clean after the killings because he was dead. I think this is the most compelling evidence of all.
Many other pieces of evidence also point to David being the killer but the above, all put before the jury, are incontrovertible. One also has to ask why, if Robin left a computer message saying David was the only one who deserved to live, that he went out of his way to frame David for the murders.
The Privy Council says that the Court of Appeal was wrong to decide that the subsequent "evidence" put forward by Karam about Robin's mental state, his alleged incest with Laniet, etc, etc, would not have altered the jury's verdict. The Privy Council says it should be for juries to decide all the evidence, not judges on appeal. The law lords
expressely made no findings of guilt or innocence when ordering a retrial, saying that was for a jury.
Falafulu fisi,
The last statement of your ‘evedence’ re the privy councils condemnation of the court of appeal for overstepping its mandate is exactly the same reason the law lords did not acquit David Bain on the spot!
It said it was a matter for a jury! Get It!
Had they done so they would have committed the same travesty!
(the privy council is an appeal court!)
That is the only reason they did not acquit him.
Next David Bain had no motive and yet his sick incestuous Father had the most compelling motive!
The rest of your evidence is mere guess work.
If you found your family all dead I guarantee you would get covered in blood as you tried to help them!
The whole investigation was flawed and the jury was misled!
I say Innocent until proven guilty!
The system is Bankrupt!
Bain is a free man and I for one feel a lot better yet not safer as sadly we are loosing the privy council and now we are all at mercy of Wilson’s cronies!
I fear the NZ legal system not David Bain!
You ought to too!
You could get framed by them tomorrow!
Motavenger
As for attacking Joe Karam I say your gutless remarks are exactly the bloody shit that we Libertarians have to face in our fight against statism in all its forms esp ending the war on drugs!
So I say !@@##$ You! motavenger
Even your name is lynch mob!
I posted this letter to the Waikato Times earlier this week.
Letter: Free all victims of state injustice
‘GONE FISHIN’ has to one of the best headlines of The Waikato Times ever and “Haere Mai no mai - No more pain David Bain - Kai ora” one of the best expressions of Maori culture in years! (Waikato Times May 16).
These expressions of joy at the victory of liberty and justice over our corrupt legal system spoken from the heart without a tax dollar in site!
An expression of love that crosses racial boundaries!
This is how culture ought to be! Without the State!
A small glimpse of the New Zealand I want to call my home
without Treaty separatism!
Te kauwhata has done our nation proud!
Our jails are filled with David Bains. People who have done no real crime.
Perhaps they grew some grass in hope to make a dollar without theft or playing the political game. One day We Libertarians will set you free too!
It will take the fortitude of Joe Karam, bless his soul!
All champions against state injustice must face public ridicule and officialdom.
Like David Bain all victims of draconian police must never submit to corrupt judgments.
Ye people remove the beams from your eyes!
Stop filling your gaols with innocents!
Ask what is justice?
Tim said...
It will take the fortitude of Joe Karam, bless his soul! All champions against state injustice must face public ridicule and officialdom.
All of what Joe Karam had campaigned for over the years were hearsays. The jury can't do mind-reading or do time-traveling, so they're able to go to the past and witness the killing whoever that person might be , then come back to the present to tell the judge. Or perhaps, the jury can read David's mind to be able to establish if he did it or not, unless you can bring in that computer that does mind reading that you eagerly posted here at NOT PC a week or 2 ago . The jury are humans and you do your judgment according to commonsense and not hearsay. Joe Karam's theory is no more valid than someone to propose that the daughter who had an incest with the father (Robin) could have done it. Motive? She would have been ashamed and disgusted when the wider community were just about to find out about this father-daughter sexual relationship. Did any physical evidence point anything to her? No, not at all. Did any physical evidence point anything to Robin? No, not at all either. How about David? Yes, it is all there for everyone to see.
Like David Bain all victims of draconian police must never submit to corrupt judgments.
Tim, you've got to give credit to the Police for protecting your rights. The Police work within the humanistic system and not a psychic system. If I was the detective that lead the investigation, the evidence of the jersey fibres found under Stephen's fingernail, would have point me to David. For me to build the case, I wouldn't pray to God to give some directions or help me to solve a difficult case. The physical evidence is right in front of me and that is where I would start with. Tell me Tim, is this corruption? For fucksake, Waikato is safe from murderers because the detectives over there don't involve officers with the likes of Tim working for the Police. If they employ people with the likes of Tim in the Police, then there would never ever be a murder case solved at all, because such officers (Timmies) would not rely on physical evidence, but rely on praying to God to give them some answers. The criminals in NZ would be flocking into Waikato in massive numbers, since they know that the detectives (the Timmies) rely on hearsay and pray. Criminals know that their crimes committed in Waikato, would never be solved.
Bain is guilty as sin.
Here's a goo comment from alist I belong to:
Robin Bain has no one defending him, and his reputation he will be on trial with no ability to make a defence. and he doesn't have a defense of innocent until proven guilty. If David is not guilty, Robin will be made guilty. All David and Joe need is reasonable doubt about Davids guilt. I am not convinced of Davids innocence. there is too much that was strange about David, and too much that was peculiar, about Robins actions if it was murder-suicide for the idea that Robin is guilty to be convincing too me. I can see and concede that there will be reasonable doubt that David is guilty. Thirteen years and Joe Karam have seen to that. I don't like the idea that Robin Bain will be murdered, and made the scape goat for David's actions.
Nor do I accept that the police did a bad job, They had a murder they identified a murderer, they worked to build a case against their murderer and that case was sufficiently good so that the jury was able to convict him. That was their job. Maybe they should have considered the possibility longer that Robin was the murderer, But I can see why they identified David as the likely murderer. What they didn't do, and couldn't have done was to make their case Karam proof. I think any one on trial or convicted for murder would like to have a Joe Karam to take their side to work tirelessly on the evidence until it was explained away or challenged by an expert, and lets face it its always possible to find an expert to challenge the evidence these days, to make countless appeals on your behalf, and to keep coming up with new evidence, even for the Privy Council. Its the tragedy of other convicted felons that they don't have a Joe Karam.
The Kahui Twins father won't get a Joe Karam. He is poor unemployed and brown. I think if every one charged with murder got their own Joe Karam, we'd have the highest rate of unresolved murders in the world.
Yeah. An inconvenient truth.
That's 'good'. Sigh.
To the 'State worshipping Anon'
Who fears Joe Karam will empty our jails...
It just shows how much you understand about justice that you would rather a few innocent men Rot in jail than have a just justice system that lets a few killers go free due to insufficient evidence!
No evidence is no evidence!
Killers get away with murder mostly because the state has made us unarmed victims!
Next you have no understanding of how twisted the police modus opperandi is and how absent of ethics this bunch of goons are!
It is rich coming from some mummy’s boy who has never experienced police corruption and injustice!
I say be patient they will @#*$ with your life sooner or later in some way…in fact they do it to you daily and yet you are too dumb to realize it. Seeing your grip of justice I know you actually sanction it!
You are a slave.
You are a sucker!
You are worse than that because you actually give the state these powers!
From first hand experience I can say the police and state have ruined my life!
From first hand experience I know the police and state are the manufacturers of Gangs and their best recruitment tools!
You have no concept how corrupt our system is because you are a sheep!
I can also tell you this from the first hand experience of my Uncle and Aunty who quit the police force because they lost faith in it and my aunty feels so strongly about their corruption that she opposes them getting Tazzers!
She knows these 'pillars of society' will misuse them and that innocent people will die, and that their misuse will create more and worse criminals!
She has the right to make this judgment as she herself has walked the beat and faced violence with nothing but a torch!
I myself am a supporter of having armed police yet I cannot argue against her as I know that she is right about the mentality of the police!
You have a wooly headed view of the police as saints!
In reality most are as amoral and as fascist as Nazi’s and that is why they joined the force!
Not to be defenders of your life and property but to be Legalized thugs!
This is why I am a Libertarian.
I understand the Ideal of the virtuous policeman yet I also understand how our society is deeply perverse and this perversion has corrupted every facet of our society on both sides of the Law!
I am fighting to reverse this slide.
I seek to reform and restore the integrity of the Law, The Police, the government, the culture, the religious heresies, all of society!
It is a ethical struggle!
I do what I can.
It doesn’t make you popular with the sheeple or the tyrants who are running this slave pen!
Thus while I said the police and the socialists have ruined my life, they have not beaten me! I refuse to play the victim. I refuse to sanction their tyranny. And as Dr Scheuller from ‘The hour of Power’ has taught who ever will listen, to "turn your scares into stars!"
That the Individual can rise above all this evil and make his understanding of injustice into a powerful tool for justice! And so become a source of strength that brings self esteem!
This is what good can come from what happened to David Bain all because of the great spirit within Joe Karam and his resolve to take on the corrupt state that you worship!
Joe Karam is not anti police he is anti corruption!
I want a strong police force and strong/just penalties for crime
But that will take an ethical revolution!
Mean while we need the Joe Karams to keep stepping up for the innocent who are crushed under the wheels of your system!
Pray you aren’t at the wrong place at the wrong time and police don’t
practice their 'Justice' on you!
State worshipping annon,
I must also add... killers get away with murder due to corrupt notions of 'temporary insanity' and reduced charges of 'manslaughter'.
The superstitions that drive the war on drugs not only generates murder.
It not only makes good people aliens from justice on every level.
It actually gets criminals reduced charges and sentences simple by saying "P made me do it"
What is your remedy?
Give the GOONS more powers!
Make more jails!
And while the police are out busting Pot heads and destroying lives and families Murderers and rapists are running amok!
Our society is so ethically corrupt it is amazing we have any quality of life at all!
Civilization is in decline, tyranny is on the rise!
Falafulu fisi,
You can see what I think of the way the police force currently functions!
Justice what is that?
I cant see any!
Falafulu fisi said …
"Joe Karam's theory is no more valid than someone to propose that the daughter who had an incest with the father (Robin) could have done it. Motive? She would have been ashamed and disgusted when the wider community were just about to find out about this father-daughter sexual relationship. Did any physical evidence point anything to her? No, not at all..."
Tim W says:
This scenario is a red herring and you know it.
First of all She revealed this incest to the shopkeeper so she was not scared of the truth!
(Thank god she did tell this shopkeeper!...It ultimately saved David no thanks to the police trying to cover this up and had they succeeded not only would David still be in jail but I myself would have been deceived into thinking the cops had done a great job!!)
Thus not only was the jury deceived but the whole Nation was!
This is abomnible!
That the police did not summon this shop keeper is the greatest testimony to the utter corruption of the police and our system and ought to raise serious questions re Scot Watson and every other conviction!
Nor would she murder her mother and brothers because of it and not shoot David as well!
That this incest happened is the ultimate fact that points to the father!
It is motive to the maximum that actually explains this monstrous event!
Joe Karam is a Hero!
No only has he championed an innocent man...
FFS, Tim. Jo Karam has been duped into defending a man who cold-bloodedly slaughtered his entire family.
I base my beliefs (well, most of them) on the actual evidence. You should try it sometime. Read the comments (especially mine) on this post over at DPF's.
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