Posts by Graeme Edgeler
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Because we pronounce 'surely' and 'shirley' differently... at least, I thought we did
You're right - I think surely and shore-ly (if it were a word) would be the common NZ homophones..
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The law protects small time crimes that keep there noses cleans rights to tell porky's about there past.
Basically. Anyone who's ever gotten a prison term can't get one, and anyone with a conviction for a specified offence - basically sexual offending - can't get one (those who've gotten prison terms for things that are no longer illegal - for example, things that were offences before the Homosexual Law Reform Act - can apply to court for a clean-slate). Oddly - and I've never been able to get an explanation for this - rape/sexual violation under the Crimes Act 1961 isn't one of the specified offences that precludes application of the clean slate legislation.
The fact that it allows you to lie is basically what I have against it - if you could apply to the court to have your record expunged after a certain time, then this required dishonesty wouldn't be necessary, and it would probably sit better with me.
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27. I do try to get them right, however. Just not 'cos I was taught them properly at school ... punctuation wasn't a big thing, either :-)
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Basically, it's never been the onus of a murder victim to prove that they're actually dead, or a burglary victim to prove that their locks got busted; so a rape trial is not the place to have to prove that a woman was actually raped.
Actually, it is the onus, it's just easier in murder or burglary. If you can't establish that someone is dead, or that's someone's missing some stuff from their home, you're not going to get a murder or burglary conviction.
You will have rape cases where rape is accepted as having happened by both sides - yes she was raped, but it wasn't this guy. Much like you could have a burglary charge go away if the offender was found illegally in a house but argued they were only there to get some of their own stuff.
X happened but it wasn't illegal defences might happen more often in rape cases, but they can happen across a range of crimes - just as can X happened and was illegal, but it wasn't me can happen in rape trials.
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I recall being taught at primary school that words groups like hear, hair, and hare were homophones. Spelt differently - like to, two and two - but pronounced the same.
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There is a reasonable person test. If Police can prove that a reasonable person would not have believed there was consent, then there's a conviction.
if you are going to claim consent, then you should be able to say on what grounds you believed consent was given
Something the woman in this case would be unable to do. Now she wouldn't be charged, but setting up a law that would prevent her defending herself if someone did doesn't seem like a great idea.
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Deborah - I think they were both drunk weren't they? And the woman was possibly so drunk that there'd be no way she could show she had reasonable grounds to believe Ropati consented ... maybe we'd find them both guilty under your law change?
Any test where people have to prove themselves innocent is going to convict a hell of a lot of innocent people.
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I the asked for a discharge with out conviction on the grounds that the conviction would unlock Stefan's clean slate.
It's not come up for me, but I've thought about instances where it could be used in a sentencing. Yours was one, but one going the other way is that the effects of a conviction are now less (only lasting 7 years, instead of an entire lifetime) so it may make section 106 harder to use.
the clean slate had hidden Stefan's criminal conviction's from this particular court
Well, I'd say Stefan was lucky. Our clean slate law isn't supposed to hide convictions from a court.
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get lots of publicity...
To be fair, he got two recommendations for clemency before all the recent publicity.
Seems like a really good case for some sort of clean slate legislation...
Quite possibly. I guess I was mostly dismissive of that idea based on the particular clean slate system we have in New Zealand. A system whereby people could apply to a court to have their record expunged after a period of blameless excellence has something going for it.
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It's an admission that a legal system has failed in some way ... a guilty person over-punished.
Not necessarily. The punishment might have been appropriate, but its effects are now too great. Anthony Circosta is a potential example of that - a 13-year-old pleading guilty in a youth court and receiving 364 days probation for firing a BB into an acquaintance's shoulder (it didn't draw blood). It's a little harsh in New Zealand terms (here - being younger than 14 - he couldn't have been charged at all), but it doesn't seem a drastic over-punishment.
The Massachusetts clemency board twice recommended a pardon - the guy had moved on from his early teens, become a volunteer fire-fighter, enlisted in the National Guard, did a tour of duty as a combat medic in Iraq, been awarded the bronze star, and was promoted to first lieutenant. He'd been offered command of his National Guard unit, but couldn't get the higher security clearance with his conviction.
There are other ways to deal with such cases - clean slate legislation, for example - but I don't know that you could characterise a situation like the one above as resulting from a flawed or over-zealous justice system, merely one in which the effect of a conviction had arguably become oppressive. He - like everyone else - had done his time but he should be able to move on after all this time. Maybe pardons aren't the right way to go about it, but if we do have them, then situations like this don't seem a bad use for them.