Friday, December 23, 2005



An outrageous leak

The High Court has granted a permanant injunction forbidding TVNZ from screening a criminal suspect's videoed confession and renactment of a murder he was subsequently acquitted of. While people may be outraged that the tape was not shown to the jury (it was judged to have breached the defendant's rights), what's really outrageous is that it was leaked to TVNZ by the officer in charge of the case - before the trial had even begun. This is a direct attempt by the police to poison the jury pool and undermine the accused's chances of receiving a fair trial.

According to the judge, the leaking of the tape violated several police regulations. I will now be using the Official Information Act to discover what, if anything, is being done to punish the officer responsible and ensure that such actions do not happen in future.

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