New Zealander, Alan Hall recently has his conviction for a murder he did not commit overturned by The New Zealand Supreme court. Hall had spent 19 years in custody.

The independent inquiry will focus on the causes of the miscarriage of justice. In doing so it is believed that aspects of investigations that frequently give rise to similar miscarriages will come under the microscope.

Aspects of police investigations that have given rise to such miscarriages include, repeatedly, misidentification of a suspect; unfair and oppressive police questioning of suspects and failures to disclose all relevant information collected as part of an investigation, to the defence.

The Hall’s Case

In Hall’s case, there were failures in many areas: Hall, a young autistic man was not afforded the correct protections reflective of his vulnerability, under police questioning; witnesses plainly identifying a suspect physically dissimilar to him were relied upon at trial but key aspects of identification by the witnesses not disclosed to the defence or altered by the prosecution without informing the respective witnesses of such changes. The initial identification was of a dark skinned suspect whereas Hall is of European descent and white skinned.

Police Investigation in Western Australia

In Western Australia, the quest for full disclosure of all relevant information collected during the course of a police investigation remains a vexed and frequently elusive objective. Typically, police will disclose evidence to both the State DPP and the defence simultaneously so that enquiries for further potentially relevant information by the defence cannot be met by the prosecutor with conduct of the case without reference to the police investigators: this can lead to a lack of oversight by prosecuting lawyers as to what is actually relevant and a potential failure to provide such material to the defence for use at trial. The discretion of police investigators in the disclosure of information gathered is not always therefore properly scrutinised and questioned by prosecuting lawyers who are not provided with the full picture.

Furthermore, in Western Australia, suspects, however vulnerable by virtue of age or mental incapacity are frequently interviewed in the absence of responsible adults and invariably in the absence of defence lawyers. Police will explain a suspect’s right of silence and proceed to questioning often without reference to whether a suspect truly understands such rights; then, in the face of a choice not to answer police questions, police will frequently continue to question a suspect until their initial decision not to comment is overborn and they simply answer questions put. Such an approach has frequently led to questionable admissions and ambiguous responses by suspects being relied upon as evidence against them at trial. It is a popular misconception that only a guilty person declines to answer police questions in interview: attempts by the innocent to clear their name can spectacularly backfire in the pressure cooker of police interviews especially if the suspect is not capable of sufficiently understanding the questions put and clearly explaining themselves.