Posts by Matthew Poole
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Hard News: Behaving badly at the bottom…, in reply to nzlemming,
And it's the judiciary's role to do these things? You clearly know enough to know that it's not. Your issue seems to be with the ruling that the Judicial Conduct Review was out of order, but the judges didn't write the law that allowed that to happen. Complain to the pollies that he got off effectively scot-free because the process was buggered up.
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Hard News: Behaving badly at the bottom…, in reply to nzlemming,
We could only make a big deal out of it because he did it, don’t forget.
True, but when you compare it to, say, taking bribes to send people to the briber's jails even when their offences deserve a non-custodial sentence, it's pretty small potatoes. In the history of judicial corruption, we've got off very, very lightly. Either that or our judiciary are far more cunning and conniving than the judiciaries of other countries and we just haven't caught any of them with their fingers in the pie.
And, in the end, they paid him off and declined to investigate further because he’d resigned.
In the end "they" ruled that the handling of the matter was so fucked beyond belief that it should never have gone the way it did, and also issued a ruling on inter-shareholder relations that is so convoluted and quacky that its implications are quite scary. To find that he'd really done something wrong, the Supreme Court had to determine that shareholder relations can take on all kinds of unexpected dimensions if there's a non-traditional contribution to the share capital involved. Before you accuse "they" of hiding it all away, you would do well to look into the decision that had to be written to establish that he was in debt to the other party.
I'm not saying that he shouldn't have disclosed his business relationship, or that he shouldn't have been honest with his colleagues about how well he knew the lawyer, but that's not the same as alleging a whitewash of the entire affair.
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Hard News: Behaving badly at the bottom…, in reply to Russell Brown,
The judge’s post-teleconference ruling unsuppressing the fact of the original decision doesn’t seem to be suppressed itself.
This recursive suppression is a bit of a mind-fuck, I have to say.
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Hard News: Behaving badly at the bottom…, in reply to giovanni tiso,
Some judges may be more authoritarian than others, certainly.
And perhaps the best chance for success of a botched police case is to find or chance upon one of those.
Maybe, but I don't think the prosecution get to choose which justice hears the case. There's also the small matter of the inevitable appeal should there be wide-ranging convictions.
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Hard News: Behaving badly at the bottom…, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Denning was nothing if not controversial. This is also not a lawsuit alleging that the police acted improperly.
NZ justices have given us time limits of roadside stops, the right to challenge "obstructing police", limitations on the "sniff test" as a means of conducting a general search without warrant of a person or their car, and on it goes. There is much local jurisprudence that demonstrates a willingness to impose limitations on the authorities and their powers in order to facilitate a free society, and suggesting that a conviction is all but guaranteed with a judge sitting alone ignores all that history and proposes motivations and reasonings that are at odds with what's demonstrated in the past rulings of the collective.
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Hard News: Behaving badly at the bottom…, in reply to giovanni tiso,
how a convinction in this particular case might be opportune for the maintenance of an orderly society
And there you go supposing that judges care little for the rule of law and the maintenance of human rights, wanting only to deliver judgements that are expedient for the purposes of the authorities of the day.
Do you see why I found McCarten's piece so odious? It's imputing a lot of motivations into the judiciary that historically have not been on display. Some judges may be more authoritarian than others, certainly, but overall there is a strong current of "right" rather than "suits the authorities' purposes" in the judgements delivered. There are many curtailments of the powers of the Police that directly result from judges ruling that "right" prevails over "convenient."
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Hard News: Behaving badly at the bottom…, in reply to Joe Wylie,
Joe, conspiracy is the only way to describe the implications of McCarten's column: that a judge sitting alone will convict people who a jury would acquit. It presupposes that the judge will come to a different conclusion simply because they're part of the establishment.
As for the last Peter Ellis enquiry, that was released a decade ago. A lot of what's been raised in the last couple of years relates to new research that didn't exist in 2000/2001. People then said it smelled kinda off, what with some of the weird claims about ritual satanic abuse and that the testimony wasn't corroborated, but now people are saying it stinks to high heaven because the interviews with the "victims" were conducted in such a way as to lead to predetermined outcomes.
ETA: Concern now focuses on the fact that the interviews on which the entire Ellis case was built would now be ruled completely inadmissible and probably lead to conduct complaints against those who conducted them. That concern didn't have cogent research behind it 10 years ago. Or do you also disagree with overturning past convictions on the basis of DNA testing that wasn't available at the time of the crime?
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Hard News: Behaving badly at the bottom…, in reply to giovanni tiso,
How do you get off living in a country where such presumptions aren’t the norm, backed up by reams upon reams of historical precedent?
Because we don't have a history of a corrupt judiciary. Or of a corrupt anything much, for that matter. We just don't. Have you missed the year-after-year results of the "Least-Corrupt Countries Index" or whatever it's called, where NZ consistently rates in the top 3?
Our judiciary is not perfect, and I don't think they're saints, but if they're really government stooges in disguise they do a masterful job of projecting an image of staunch independence. Perhaps you missed the Chief Justice being told to keep her opinions on crime and punishment to herself? And the repeated statements by the senior District Court judge on the same topic?
You may come from a country where public officials are available to the highest bidder, and thus ought best be treated with appropriate degrees of scepticism, but NZ is not Italy. We make a big deal out of a judge not recusing himself because he had business relations with a lawyer appearing before him. That, and fiddling expenses, are as close as we get to true judicial scandal. -
Hard News: Behaving badly at the bottom…, in reply to Joe Wylie,
Peter Ellis was convicted by a jury who got bamboozled by what's looking more and more like a metric butt-load of bullshit. Were they part of a conspiracy too?
Judges are supposed to be somewhat harder to baffle than juries. They have the time to examine the intricacies of scientific evidence, and are meant to be less hesitant at calling out expert witnesses. There's a reason behind the saying "If you're guilty, go with a jury. If you're innocent, go with a judge."
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Hard News: Holiday Open Thread 2:…, in reply to Neil Morrison,
Causal? Who said anything about causal? Her poster was bad taste, and now it's back-fired. Any ordinary human ought to feel a bit shit in the situation, regardless of the ultimate cause.